The Chambered Nautilus 



Two sets of lips surround the mouth, each bearing about 

 two dozen feeding tentacles. Two pairs of ciliated tentacles, one 

 in front, another behind, each eye, are very active, especially 

 when strong-scented bait is brought near. They have been dem- 

 onstrated to be the organs of smell. 



The dark-coloured eyes are large and simple in structure ; 

 they look out to right and left from their stations at the bases 

 of the tentacles, just above the rim of the shell, and forward an 

 inch or two from the angle next to the spiral coil. The ocean 

 bed is probably dark, and the eye of the nautilus is, therefore, 

 of little practical use. No doubt smell is the guiding sense in 

 hunting food. 



Tropical seas near the Fiji Islands, New Hebrides, New 

 Caledonia and the Philippines are the most populous homes of 

 the Nautilus. So far as is now known, specimens are obtainable 

 in the greatest numbers on the southern coasts of the Island of 

 Negros in the Philippines, at depths between i,8oo and 2,200 

 feet. Some say schools of Nautili may be seen afloat. Others 

 deny this, insisting, in spite of what sailors tell and 

 "poets feign," that they never come up except when in a 

 moribund condition. In this case, they appear only at inter- 

 vals and solitary. 



A normal Nautilus is a stay-at-home body, which forages 

 industriously on the sea bottom, chasing its favourite quarry, 

 the crabs, in and out among the coral rocks. 



In the Philippines there is no local demand for Nautili or 

 their shells that would justify any direct effort to obtain them. 

 The mollusks are attracted by the baits lowered by fishermen, 

 and blundering into the traps, they are hauled up with the legiti- 

 mate catch. They are therefore, well described as "a by-pro- 

 duct of deep sea fishing." The fishermen pay little more attention 

 to them than the fish do. Some are eaten by the natives, who 

 pay about four cents apiece for them. They are used as a soup 

 meat, or simply boiled; but their flesh is of indifferent quality. 

 Dippers are made of the shells. Vases are sometimes elaborately 

 carved. A rude kind of spoon is also cut out for home use. A 

 recent development is the demand for the shells in China for the 

 manufacture of buttons and ornaments. It is reported by Bash- 

 ford Dean, who spent a short time on the fishing grounds in 1901, 

 that a Chinaman who made a tour of the fisheries clustered on 



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