436 



CEPHALOPODA. 



It is a thankless office to dispel the pleasant dreams of imagina- 

 tion ; yet such becomes our disagreeable duty upon this occasion. 

 M. Sander Rang, in a recently published memoir upon this sub- 

 ject,* has, from actual observation, apparently established the fol- 

 lowing facts : 1 st, That the belief, more or less generally enter- 

 tained since the time of Aristotle, respecting the skilful manoeuvres 

 of the Poulpe of the Argonaut in progressing by the help of sails 

 and oars on the surface of the water, is erroneous. 2nd, The arms 

 which are expanded into membranes have no other function than 

 that of enveloping the shell in which the animal lives, and that for a 

 determinate object to be explained hereafter. 3rd, The Poulpe, 

 with its shell, progresses in the open sea in the same manner as other 

 Cephalopods. And lastly, That, when at the bottom of the ocean, 

 the Argonaut, covered with its shell, creeps upon an infundibuli- 

 form disc, formed by the junction of the arms at their base, and 

 presenting (alas !) the appearance of a Gasteropod mollusk. 



(478.) It is not a little remarkable that the same animal should, 

 even in these days, be the subject of the extremes of credulity and 

 scepticism ; yet such has been the case with the Argonaut. While 

 zoologists were contented to allow the creature in question the 

 reputation of being an active and skilful navigator, it has been very 

 generally stigmatised as a pirate, which, having forcibly possessed 

 itself of the shell of another animal, lived therein, and made use of 

 it for its own purposes. It was in vain to urge, in opposition to this 

 calumny, that the Argonaut was never found in any other shell 

 than the beautiful one represented in the preceding figure ; that no 

 other creature had been pointed out as the real fabricator of its 

 abode ; that, whatever the size of the Poulpe, it occupied a re- 

 sidence precisely corresponding in dimensions with those of the 

 possessor. The apparent want of resemblance between the out- 

 ward form of the animal {fig' 206) and that of its fragile covering, 

 together with the absence of any muscular connection between the 

 two, were looked upon as furnishing sufficient evidence of its para- 

 sitical habits. The recent observations of Madame Jeannette 

 Power, to be noticed more at length hereafter, and those of M. 

 Sander Rang, above alluded to, have, however, completely settled 

 the so long agitated question ; and, the Argonaut having been 

 watched carefully from the state in which it leaves the egg until 

 it arrives at maturity, the manner in which it forms and repairs its 

 frail shell is now satisfactorily understood. 



* Guerin's Magasin de Zoologie, translated into the Magazine of Natural History, 

 vol. iii. New Series, p. 521. 



