1839-40 ON ARGONAUTS 153 



it inhabits its own shell and no other. Mr. 

 Broderip also had a look afterwards. R. showed 

 him the specimen in the bottle, and seemed to 

 think the point was practically settled.' 



' \Wi. — At eight o'clock with R. to the Royal 

 Institution to hear Faraday lecture on electricity, 

 galvanism, and the electric eel. Faraday is the 

 beau ideal of a popular lecturer.' 



1 26th. — R. and I to Great Ormond Street, 

 where Madame Power 4 showed us her boxes of 

 fossil shells, &c, and some molluscs in bottles, 

 and, above all, the argonaut shells with the frac- 

 tures made by her in her experiments, beautifully 

 filled up and mended : three specimens in different 

 stages of reconstruction, the first filled up with 

 a substance like the lining membrane of a boiled 

 egg. This was done in about ten minutes after 

 the piece was cut away by Madame Power ; the 

 more perfect restorations had the corrugations 

 formed to match the rest.' 



4 February 2. — R. to Madame Power's and 

 brought away three bottles full of argonauts. A 

 beautiful collection ! One of them has the sail 

 spread back over the shell, the suckers on the 

 points. Madame P. says that if we count the 

 suckers they will be found to correspond with the 

 number of points. This, with other circum- 

 stances, makes the question, I think, not whether 



4 Jeanette Power, nee de Villepreux, a lady who made extensive 

 researches on the paper nautilus. 



