A WONDERFUL BUILDER. [99 



ing the animal to be the builder of its own habitation, and 

 that the expanded arms do not serve the purposes of sails. 



The real rower on the ocean is the beautiful little blue 

 and silver shell-fish, the Glaucus, also a tenant of the warm 

 •seas, who swims with great swiftness by aid of its conical 

 and oar-like appendages. 



A wonderful builder is the nautilus, as may be seen by 

 the chambers it fashions for its own accommodation ; for the 

 shell is divided into partitions, and as the animal increases in 

 size it forms another and larger apartment proportionate to 

 its growth, leaving the others empty as it proceeds, until, 

 satisfied with its labors, it becomes the occupant of the 

 highest chamber, though still communicating with the cham- 

 bers it has abandoned, by means of a membranous tube 

 which passes through the centre of each, enabling the nau- 

 tilus by throwing air or gas into the empty chambers, or by 

 exhausting them of air, to rise or sink into the water at will. 



How truly wonderful is the intelligence displayed by 

 the tiny nautilus in its chambered dwelling I " These beau- 

 tiful arrangements," Dean Buckland once remarked, " are 

 and ever have been subservient to a common object — the 

 construction of hydraulic instruments, of especial importance 

 in the economy of creatures destined to move sometimes at 

 the bottom, and at other times upon or near the surface of 

 the sea. The delicate adjustments whereby the same prin- 

 ciple is extended through so many grades and modifications 

 of a single type, show the uniform and constant agency of 

 some controlling intelligence ; and in searching for the origin 

 of so much method and regularity amidst so much variety, 

 the mind can only rest when it has passed back through the 

 subordinate series of second causes to the great First Cause, 

 which is found in the will and power of a great Creator." 



The Pearly Nautilus, thus named from the shell being 

 lined with a layer of the most beautiful pearly gloss, inhabits 

 the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Nothing can exceed the 



