160 
ANIMAL CURIOSITIES 
watched the radiant creature all day and late 
into the night, and the following morning 
part of the new shell was found, a delicate, 
tenuous mass, that would gradually harden. 
Hence I believe that a new and large shell 
can be produced in a few hours.” 
The female argonaut is not organically 
attached to her shell in the manner of an 
oyster or a mussel, but merely rests inside and 
retains herself in position by clasping the outer 
sides of the domicile with the large flattened 
lobes of her specialized arms. 
A dweller in rather deep water, and only 
occasionally coming to the surface, few people 
have had the opportunity of seeing one of the 
creatures otherwise than within spirit-filled 
bottles in museums. The latter, however, 
give little idea of the wonders of the living 
animal, whose ever-changing tints of lavender, 
blue, scarlet, rose and gold render it an object 
of exquisite beauty. 
It progresses in a similar way to the octopus, 
crawling along the ground by means of its 
ordinary arms, and propelling itself backwards 
by ejecting water through its funnel. 
Passing to the decapods, which include the 
squids or calmaries, the cuttle-fish or sepia, 
and the sepiola, we come to a group of the 
cephalopoda that differs from the octopods 
