220 MOLLUSCA. 



and unconscious of being observed, they would ex- 

 hibit their many beauties rowing along, their full 

 sails tinged with elegant colours, resting the ex- 

 tremities of the sails on the two sides of the shell, 

 or embracing the shell with them. When pressed 

 by hunger, they would come almost to the surface, 

 and when Madame Power offered them food, they 

 would snatch it out of her hands and greedily de- 

 vour it. The eggs are like millet-seeds, perfectly 

 transparent, attached by filaments of brilliant gluten 

 to a common stem of the same. Three days after 

 the eggs had been discovered, the little Poulpes were 

 observed, in the shell of the parent, without any 

 shell, like small worms. Soon after, they began to 

 shew buds with two rows of points on them, the 

 rudiments of the arms and suckers ; the sail-arms 

 appeared first by several days, On the sixth day, 

 the first vestige of a shell was seen, very thin and 

 flexible. The eggs are found in the interior of the 

 spire of the parent, the young between the roof of 

 the spire and the mantle ; the infant shell seems to 

 be first deposited in the end of its parent's spire, 

 whose form it thus assumes ; but, after a while, it 

 carries on the process without aid. Two or three 

 eggs are developed at a time ; when the young are 

 about three-quarters of an inch in length, they in- 

 close themselves in the spire of the parent, where 

 they remain four days to acquire the shell ; three 

 days more they remain under the body of the old 

 one, and are then ejected.* 



See Mag. of Nat. Hist. April 1839. 



