2 nature's teachings. 



Charybdis, and that the well-known tale of Edgar Poe is 

 absolutely without foundation. 



Perhaps one of the prettiest legends in natural history is 

 that of the Paper Nautilus, with which so much poetry is 

 associated. We have all been accustomed from childhood to 

 Pope's well-known lines beginning — 



•' Learn of the little Nautilus to sail," 



and some of us may be acquainted with those graceful verses 

 of James Montgomery, in his " Pelican Island : " — 



" Light as a flake of foam upon the wind, 

 Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell, 

 Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled. 

 Fraught with young life it righted as it rose, 

 And moved at will along the yielding water. 

 The native pilot of this little bark 

 Put out a tier of oars on either side, 

 Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail, 

 And mounted up and glided down the billow 

 In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air, 

 And wander in the luxury of light. 

 ***** * * 



It closed, sank, dwindled to a point, then nothing, 

 While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy 

 Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it?' 



So deeply ingrained is the poetical notion of the sailing 

 powers attributed to the nautilus, that many people are quite 

 incredulous when they are told that there is just as much 

 likelihood of seeing a mermaid curl her hair as of witnessing 

 a nautilus under sail. How the creature in question does 

 propel itself will be described in the course of the present 

 chapter ; and the reader will see that although one parallel 

 between Nature and Art in the nautilus does not exist, there 

 are several others which until later days have not even been 

 suspected. 



It is, therefore, partially true that science does destroy 

 romance. But, though she destroys, she creates, and she 

 gives infinitely more than she takes away, as is shown in the 

 many late discoveries which have transformed the whole 

 system of civilised life. Sometimes, as in the present instance, 

 she discovers one analogy while destroying another, and 

 though she shatters the legend of the sailing nautilus, she 

 produces a marine animal which really does sail, and does not 

 appear to be able to do anything else. This is the Yelella, a 



