The Argonaut. Paper Nautilus 



Picture the meek little eight-armed beast offering his hand 

 to the lady Argonauta of his choice. She accepts it literally, 

 snatches it, and swims away with it ; and that is the last he sees 

 of her. He does not accompany her to the surface of the water. 



Good sailors they must be, the argonauts, to have become 

 distributed so widely over all warm seas. They are reported to 

 be very plentiful on the northern coasts of Australia where they 

 are cast up by winds during spawning season. The sea gulls 

 devour them and their eggs, and the empty shells are carried off 

 by the returning tides. Live argonauts are reported occasionally 

 on the Florida coast; they abound among the Pacific Island 

 coasts, in the Gulf of California, and about the Cape of Good Hope. 

 Deep sea dredging brings them up most anywhere within 40 

 degrees of the equator. Fresh shells were taken up ninety miles 

 from Narragansett Bay, R. I. A single specimen came ashore at 

 Long Branch, N. J., and was studied alive for ten days in an 

 aquarium. 



For most of the year the Argonaut walks about on the sea 

 bottom, carrying her shell aloft, still in the sure clasp of those 

 two wing-like arms. To conchologists her life history is full of 

 interest and charm. To poets and to all but the literal-minded 

 she will always be: 



"The ocean Mab — the fairy of the sea," 



her fragile shell a dream ship, with purple sails, companion of 

 the ship of pearl, the Chambered Nautilus. 



444 



