108 A LONG DISPUTE. 



the light. In the last place, the eight-armed Cephalopods were 

 known to be a set of prying, inquisitive fellows, fond of poking 

 their tails into every hole and crevice where they could, by any 

 possibility, manage to squeeze them ; and, on one occasion, one 

 of them was actually taken with its body wedged into a small 

 butter-jar, in which it had, no doubt, gone proudly careering 

 through the water, till at last, attracted by the tempting 

 appearance of a baited hook, it ventured a nibble, and so got 

 caught. 



Evidently the case of the Argonaut was a suspicious one. 

 What had its friends to say on the other side, and to show that 

 the shell it occupied was really of its own fabrication? Two 

 things, and two only they could advance : first, that the shell 

 had never been found on any other animal ; secondly, that the 

 Argonaut had never been found in any other shell. The 

 defence was a meagre one certainly, but it was to the purpose ; 

 and, notwithstanding that the general voice went against it, the 

 Argonaut had many champions on its side, who stoutly main- 

 tained that it was both architect and rightful owner of the grace- 

 ful little bark in which, by general consent, it sailed so proudly 

 on the bosom of the deep. 



Thus had the question stood for centuries, no new facts of any 

 moment being added, and the disputation going on as stoutly as 

 ever, when at length, and only a few years ago, a lady entered 

 the field, and, by a few simple experiments and observations, put 

 the philosophers to open shame, and for ever set at rest the long- 

 disputed question. 



Madame Jeannette Power, a French lady residing on the 

 shores of the Bay of Messina, where the Argonaut is of frequent 

 occurrence, enclosed several of the animals in a sort of cage, 

 fenced off from the sea at the water-side, and there studied their 

 history in all its stages. In this way Madame Power ascertained 

 that the Argonaut is the indisputable fabricator of the shell it 

 inhabits ; that the shell regularly increases with the growth of 

 the animal; and that its first formation, and all subsequent 

 repairs that it may need, are effected by the broad membraneous 

 expansions which the Argonaut was reputed to hoist as sails to 

 catch the breeze. The results of Madame Power's investigations 

 came upon the scientific world as a perfect surprisal ; and, in 



