TESTACEOUS FISHES. 



087 



poet's description of it, has chiefly excited 

 human curiosity. These animals, particularly 

 those of the white, light kind, are chiefly 

 found in the Mediterranean ; and scarce any 

 who have sailed on that sea, but must often 

 have seen them. When the sea is calm, they 

 are observed floating on the surface ; some 

 spreading their little sail ; some rowing with 

 tlieir feet, as if for life and death ; and others 

 still, floating upon their mouths, like a ship 

 with the keel upward. If taken while thus 

 employed, and examined, the extraordinary 

 mechanism of their limbs for sailing will ap- 

 pear more manifest. The nautilus is furnish- 

 ed with eight feet, which issue near the 

 mouth, and may as properly be called barbs : 

 these are connected to each other by a thin 

 skin, like that between the toes of a duck, but 

 much thinner and more transparent. Of these 

 eight feet thus connected, six are sUort, and 

 these are held up as sails to catch the wind in 

 sailing : the two others are longer, and are 

 kept in the water ; serving, like paddles, to 

 steer their course by. When the weather is 

 quite calm, and the animal is pursued from 

 belo\v, it is then seen expanding only a part 

 of its sail, and rowing with the rest: whenever 

 it is interrupted, or fears danger from above, 

 it instantly furls the sail, catches in all its oars, 

 turns its shell mouth downward, and instantly 

 sinks to the bottom. Sometimes, also, it is 

 seen pumping the water from its leaking hulk ; 

 and, when unfit for sailing, deserts its shell 

 entirely. The forsaken hulk is seen floating 

 along, till it dashes, by a kind of shipwreck, 

 upon the rocks or the shore. 



From the above description, I think we 

 may consider this animal rather as attempting 

 to save itself from the attacks of its destroyers, 

 than as rowing in pursuit of food. Certain 

 it is, that no creature of the deep has more 

 numerous and more powerful enemies. Its 

 shell is scarcely ever found in perfect preserva- 

 tion ; but is generally seen to bear some marks 

 of hostile invasion. Its little arts, therefore, 

 upon the surface of the water, may have been 

 given it for protection: and it may thus be 

 endued with comparative swiftness to avoid 

 the crab, the sea-scorpion, the trochus, and 

 all the slower predacious reptiles that lurk for 

 it at the bottom of the water. 



From this general view of snails, they ap- 

 pear to be a much more active, animated 

 tribe, than from their figure one would at first 

 conceive. They seem to an inattentive spec- 

 tator, as mere inert masses of soft flesh, rather 

 loaded than covered with a shell, scarcely ca- 

 llable of motion, and insensible to all the ob- 

 jects around them. When viewed more close- 

 ly, they are found to be furnished with the 

 organs of life and sensation in a tolerable per- 

 fection : they are defended with armour, that 

 is at once both light and strong ; they are as 

 active as their necessities require ; and are 

 possessed of appetites more poignant than 

 those of animals that seem much more per- 

 fectly formed. In short, they are a fruitful, in- 

 dustrious tribe ; furnished, like all other ani- 

 mals, with the powers of escape and invasion ; 

 they have their pursuits and their enmities ; 

 and, of all creatures of the deep, they have 

 most to fear from each other. 



CHAPTER CLV. 



OF BIVALVED SHELL-FISH, OR SHELLS OF THE OYSTER KIND. 



IT may seem whimsical to make a dis- 

 tinction between the animal perfections of tur- 

 binated and bivalved shell-fish ; or to grant a 

 degree of superiority to the snail above the 

 oyster. Yet this distinction strongly and ap- 

 parently obtains in nature ; and we shall find 

 the bivalved tribe of animals in every respect 

 inferior to those we have been describing. 



Inferior in all their sensations ; inferior in 

 their powers of motion ; but particularly infe- 

 rior in their system of animal generation. 

 The snail tribe, as we saw, are hermaphrodite, 

 but require the assistance of each other for fe- 

 cundation ; all the bivalve tribe are hermaphro- 

 dite in like manner, but they require no 

 assistance from each other towards impregna- 



