270 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



recent and eminent as Dumeril and De Blainville, whether 

 the octopod really secreted the shell, or whether, like the 

 hermit-crab, it borrowed for its protection the shell of some 

 other mollusk. Aristotle left the subject with the faithful 

 acknowledgment : " As to the origin and growth of this 

 shell nothing is yet exactly determined. It appears to be 

 produced like other shells ; but even this is not evident, 

 any more than it is whether the animal can live without it." 

 Pliny, as usual, instead of throwing light on the matter, 

 obscured it. He regarded the shell as the property of a 

 gasteropod like the snail, and the octopod as an amateur 

 yachtsman who occasionally went on board and took a trip 

 in the frail craft, and assisted its owner to navigate it for 

 the fun of the thing. This is what he says about it : * 



" Mutianus reports that he saw in the Propontis a shell formed like 

 a little ship, having the poop turned up and the prow pointed. An 

 animal called the Nauplius, resembling an octopus, was enclosed in 

 the shell with its owner, for its amusement in the following manner. 

 When the sea is calm the guest lowers his arms, and uses them as 

 oars and a helm, whilst the owner of the shell expands himself to 

 catch the wind ; so that one has the pleasure of carrying and sailing, 

 and the other of steering. Thus, these two otherwise senseless animals 

 take their pleasure together ; but the meeting them sailing in their 

 shell is a bad omen for mariners, and foretells some great calamity." 



Although the animal was never found in any other shell, 

 and the shell was never known to contain any other animal, 

 and though, when the shell and the animal were found 

 together they were always of proportionate size, this octo- 

 pod, as I have said, was looked upon by some conchologists 

 as a pirate who had taken possession of a ship which did 

 not belong to him, until Madame Jeannette Power, a 

 French lady then residing in Messina, having succeeded in 

 keeping alive for a time an argonaut the shell of which had 

 * Naturalis Historia, lib. ix. cap. 30. 



