MODEL DIVING-BELL. 309 



diving-bell, it is open at bottom; but this is an assertion 

 which, perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, requires proof. 



To give you on this point entire satisfaction, we will raise 

 from the water and reverse our diver's habitation, even at the 

 risk of disturbing its occupant, who has been also, we must 

 tell you, its ingenious constructor. There, the bell is up- 

 lifted, and we see him sitting within it, head downwards 

 a somewhat strange position ; but it seems we have fairly 

 routed him. He falls ! falls, though, upon eight legs, and 

 makes off at full speed, no matter whither. Our business now 

 is with his vacated abode, a dome woven, as we now see, of 

 close-spun silk, open, as we said, at bottom, impervious at 

 top, with no orifice for entrance of water or of air.* Unpro- 

 vided with a pipe or other visible contrivance for conveyance 

 of the latter, how, we may inquire, did our submerged diver 

 manage to respire under water ? Why, in truth, he is some- 

 what of an amphibious animal, but he nevertheless finds it 

 convenient to take down with him from upper air a supply of 

 the vital element, which he not unfrequently returns to fetch. 

 Is it by means of an air-purnp that he collects his supply ? 

 Not exactly ; but by help of a curious inhaling or imbibing 

 instrument carried at the tail, and called a spinneret, because it 

 serves also the purpose of spinning helping him to spin his 

 bell-like and aquatic habitation. And now we may tell you, 

 if you have not already discovered it from our glimpse, on dis- 



* See Vignette. 



