ARGONAUTA. 



TESTA univalvis, libera, tenuissima, siibnavi- 

 culiformi, subspirali, spira involuta, apertura 

 maxima, lanceolata, dorso bicarinato, carinis 

 tuberculiferis. 



Animal heteropodum? 



Celebuatkd in poetic fiction as is the Nautilus^ or Paper 

 Sailor, (which by common consent is now termed Argo- 

 nauta,) the shell, itself eminently beautiful, surpasses 

 whatever may be said of it, for it conveys no false impres- 

 sion to the mind, and to the true Philosopher, like all the 

 works of Nature, it is a subject of delightful contempla- 

 tion, as proclaiming the wisdom and power of its great 

 Creator. 



The animal which forms this transcendently elegant 

 shell is not yet known to Naturalists; that it belongs to 

 the Cephalopoda is scarcely probable, since it is well 

 known that none of that family, not even excepting the 

 Ocythoe (which has by some been regarded as its proper 

 inhabitant and not as a parasite,) has the means of pro- 

 ducing an wholly external calcareous secretion. That 

 the Ocythoe is merely a parasite taking up its abode and 

 depositing its eggs in the Argonaut, after perhaps devour- 

 ing its rightful owner, cannot in our opinion, be doubtful. 



But we think the proper inhabitant of the Argonaut, 

 if ever it should be known, will prove to be nearly of the 

 same nature with that to which the Carinaria belongs: or 

 it might possibly belong to Lamarck's family of Pteropoda, 

 It is a singular fact that its haunts should never have been 

 discovered, while its shell is so frequently found in pos- 

 session of its great enemy the Ocythoe, and particularly 

 so, since where it does live it must abound even much 



