the Inhabitant of the Argonaut. 399 



the stomach, or the side of the tube, towards the back of the 

 shell, and the back towards the ventral part ; that is to say, 

 in a word, that the animal is reversed in the shell. 



It is thus, indeed, that one of us saw it, and caused it to 

 be drawn, in a specimen carefully selected by M. Bertrand 

 Geslin. Nevertheless, it is difficult to conceive how M. De 

 Ferussac could have had the animal represented in the two 

 contrary positions, if he had not found it thus ; he, who knew 

 very well that a powerful argument had been drawn from 

 this difference of position in favour of the parasitic nature of 

 the Ocythoe. 



M. Rang adds, that the two great palmated arms, the use 

 of which we were really ignorant of, for that of serving for 

 sails or oars, as had been supposed, was altogether fictitious ; 

 and which, in the reversed position of the animal in its shell, 

 become inferior; pass at first behind, leaning against the 

 auricles of the shell ; then, bending from behind forwards 

 (that is to say, from the summit to the base of the shell), they 

 spread themselves laterally, so as to embrace it on each side, 

 and absolutely so as not to leave any part of it visible ; a 

 little like, according to M. Rang, the way in which the lateral 

 lobes at the foot of the Cyprae^ae (Porcelains) envelop the shell 

 of these animals when they crawl. 



The following is the manner in which the Ocythoe, carry- 

 ing its shell, walks upon a solid surface (sol resistant) at the 

 bottom of the sea : — The shell, being in a normal position, the 

 back upwards, and the opening downwards, it is held by the 

 two palmated arms, which are turned upwards, or towards its 

 back ; the three other pairs of arms have a lateral motion 

 (s'agitent lateralement) ; the funnel-shaped disc, at the bottom 

 of which is the mouth, is brought close to the ground ; and the 

 excretory tube is uppermost, corresponding to the back of 

 the shell ; so that M. Rang sees in this mollusc, thus situated, 

 a kind of siphonobranchiate gasteropode, of which that which 

 all zoologists and anatomists have looked upon as the back 

 will be the stomach, and vice versa. This opinion, which 

 young Meiranx, who was |oo soon taken away from the 

 scientific pursuits which he cultivated with so much ardour 

 and acuteness, advocated on anatomical grounds some years 

 ago, is carried out (developpe) by M. Rang, by considering 

 the infundibulum as a kind of foot; the lower pair of arms 

 become upper ones, as tentacula, properly so called ; the two 

 other intermediate pairs, as analogous to the tentaculiform 

 appendages upon the sides of the Monodonta?, and the pal- 

 mated arms as, without doubt, a kind of lobes of the mantle. 



In order to invalidate, in some measure at least, this view 



GG 4; 



