Marvels of the Universe 



o 



89 



[5y 7'Aeo. Carreraa. 



THE PAPER NAUTILUS. 



The female Nautilus holding the wonderful shell she has constructed for the receptii 

 sented as going backwards, impelled by the discharge of water through the siphon. The 

 male. The scale is one-half the natural size. 



n and care of her eggs. She is repre- 

 small, shell-less creature below is the 



THE PAPER NAUTILUS 



^Iaxy an idle tale has been spun around the Paper Nautilus, and learned folk give the doubtful 

 honour of their origin to the Greek sailors, who, in crossing and recrossing the iEgean Sea, became 

 familiar with these strange little fairy vessels and their faithful pilots. " Argonauts " is the name 

 that has been given to the species, and therein is to be found the germ of the first legend ; for the 

 word means " the saihng-ship," and it would not be long before the charming but fallacious romance 

 obtained credence that the Paper Nautilus sails upon the ocean with numerous tentacles stretched 

 out from the delicate shell, two of which are raised aloft and spread out into thin, filmy sails to 

 catch the wind that shall propel it through the waves, while the remaining arms are used by this 

 quaint navigator after the fashion of oars. Vastly wonderful, but vastly untrue ! 



Again, it was stated with all possible ciixumstances of verity, and supported by the most 

 elaborate and ingenious argument (aye, and believed even as lately as the beginning of the last 

 centur}'), that the Nautilus was a parasite who, by fair means or foul, had obtained possession of 

 his host's shell and sailed therein — a theory equally wonderful and equally untrue. 



Yet ours would be a sorry task if we had to repudiate such extravagant theories and make of 

 our romantic ship nothing but a small and insignificant ocean-dweller. Such, however, is not the 

 case. The sober facts of the life history of the Nautilus corroborate the statement that Truth is 

 stranger than Fiction. The Nautilus is not a pilot, she is a nurse ; her shell is not a ship, it is a 

 cradle — or, as Professor Huxley more aptly described it, a perambulator. It is only the female 

 of the species that bears the shell ; the male is a small creature not more than an inch in length : 



