AKGONAUT. 



563 



locked together (fig. 282, A), and thus he made to cooperate in dragging 

 to the mouth such powerful or refractory prey as, singly, the arms 

 might be unahle to subdue an arrangement which has been rudely 

 imitated in the construction of the obstetric forceps*. 



(1512.) The Argonaut constitutes the type of another family of the 

 CEPHALOPODA, and is remarkable as being the inhabitant of a shell of 



Fig. 283. 



Argonaut (Argonauta Argo). (After Poli.) 



exquisite beauty, familiarly known as that of the Paper -Nautilus a 

 shell which, from remote antiquity, has been decorated with all the 

 ornaments of fiction, and celebrated alike by Poetry and her sister Arts. 

 (1513.) It was, indeed, to this Cephalopod that the ancients assigned 

 the honour of having first suggested to mankind the possibility of 

 traversing the sea in ships ; and nothing could be more elegant than 



* Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, art. CEPHALOPODA. 



2o2 



