Part 22

Madame Power was mistaken on two points. Firstly, the construction of the shell does not commence after the birth of the animal, but, as has been shown by M. Duvernoy, its rudimentary form is distinctly visible by the aid of the microscope in the embryo, whilst still in the egg; and secondly, she continued to believe in the use of the membranous arms as sails, and of the others as oars. This fallacy was exploded by Captain Sander Rang, an officer of the French navy, and "port-captain" at Algiers, who carefully followed up Madame Power's experiments, and confirmed the more important of them. Thus were set at rest questions which for centuries had divided the opinions of zoologists.

The "Paper Nautilus" is, in fact, a female octopod provided with a portable nest, in which to carry about and protect her eggs, instead of brooding over them in some cranny of a rock, or within the recesses of a pile of shells, as does her cousin the octopus. From the membranes of the two flattened and expanded arms she secretes and, if necessary, repairs her shell, and by applying them closely to its outer surface on each side, holds herself within it, for it is not fastened to her body by any attaching muscles. When disturbed or in danger she can loosen her hold, and, leaving her cradle, swim away independently of it. It has been said that, having once left it, she has not the ability nor perhaps the sagacity to re-enter her nest, and resume the guardianship of her eggs. From my own observations of the breeding habits of other octopods I think this most improbable. The use and purpose of the shell of the argonaut will be better understood if I briefly describe what I have witnessed of the treatment of its eggs by its near relative, the octopus.

Appendix to Sir Edward Belcher's 'Voyage of the "Samarang,"' by Mr. Arthur Adams, assistant surgeon to the expedition.

"The eggs of the octopus," as I have elsewhere said, "when first laid, are small, oval, translucent granules, resembling little grains of rice, not quite an eighth of an inch long. They grow along and around a common stalk, to which every egg is separately attached, as grapes form part of a bunch. Each of the elongated bunches is affixed by a glutinous secretion to the surface of a rock or stone (never to seaweed, as has been erroneously stated), and hangs pendent by its stalk in a long white cluster, like a magnified catkin of the filbert, or, to use Aristotle's simile, like the fruit of the white alder. The length and number of these bunches varies according to the size and condition of the parent. Those produced by a small octopus are seldom more than about three inches long, and from twelve to twenty in number; but a full-grown female will deposit from forty to fifty of such clusters, each about five inches in length. I have counted the eggs of which these clusters are composed, and find that there are about a thousand in each: so that a large octopus produces in one laying, usually extended over three days, a progeny of from 40,000 to 50,000. I have seen an octopus, when undisturbed, pass one of her arms beneath the hanging bunches of her eggs, and, dilating the membrane on each side of it into a boat-shaped hollow, gather and receive them in it as in a trough or cradle which exhibited in its general shape and outline a remarkable similarity to the shell of the argonaut, with the eggs of which octopod its own are almost identical in form and appearance. Then she would caress and gently rub them, occasionally turning towards them the mouth of her flexible exhalent and locomotor tube, like the nozzle of a fireman's hose-pipe, so as to direct upon them a jet of the excurrent water. I believe that the object of this syringing process is to free the eggs from parasitic animalcules, and possibly to prevent the growth of conferva, which, I have found, rapidly overspreads those removed from her attention."

'The Octopus,' 1873, p. 57.

It has been suggested that the syringing may be for the purpose of keeping the water surrounding the eggs well aerated; but this is evidently erroneous, for the water ejected from the tube has been previously deprived of its oxygen, and consequently of its health-giving properties, whilst passing over the gills of the parent. Week after week, for fifty days, a brooding octopus will continue to attend to her eggs with the most watchful and assiduous care, seldom leaving them for an instant except to take food, which, without a brief abandonment of her position, would be beyond her reach. Aristotle asserted that while the female is incubating she takes no food. This is incorrect; but in every case of the kind that has come under my observation the mother octopod, whenever she has been obliged to leave her nest, has returned to it as quickly as possible; and so I believe can, and does, the female argonaut to her shell, and that, too, without any difficulty. In her case the numerous clusters of eggs are all united at their origin to one slender and tapering stalk which is fixed by a spot of glutinous matter to the body-whorl of the spiral shell.

This "paper-sailor," then, whom the poets have regarded as endowed with so much grace and beauty, and living in luxurious ease, is but a fine lady octopus after all. Turn her out of her handsome residence, and, instead of the fairy skimmer of the seas, you have before you an object apparently as free from loveliness and romance as her sprawling, uncanny-looking, relative. Instead of floating in her pleasure boat over the surface of the sea, the argonaut ordinarily crawls along the bottom, carrying her shell above her, keel uppermost; and the broad extremities of the two arms are not hoisted as sails, nor allowed when at rest to dangle over the side of the "boat;" but are used as a kind of hood by which the animal retains the shell in its proper position, as a man bearing a load on his shoulders holds it with his hands. When she comes to the surface, or progresses by swimming instead of walking, she does so in the same manner as the octopus: namely, by the forcible expulsion of water from her funnel-like tube.

But if truth compels us to deprive her of the counterfeit halo conferred on her by poets, we can award her, on behalf of science, a far nobler crown; namely, that of the Queen of the whole great Invertebrate Animal Kingdom. For, the Cephalopoda, of which the argonaut is a highly organised member, are not only the highest in their own division, the Mollusca, but they are as far superior to all other animals which have no backbones, as man stands lord and king over all created beings that possess them.

Although in outward shape the spiral shell of the Pearly Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) somewhat resembles that of the argonaut, its internal structure is very different. A section of it shows that it is divided into several chambers, each of which is partitioned off from the adjoining ones, the last formed or external one, in which the animal lives, being much larger than the rest. The object and mode of construction of these chambers is as follows. As the animal grows, a constant secretion of new material takes place on the edge of the shell. By this unceasing process of the addition of new shell in the form of a circular curve or coil around the older portion, the whole rapidly increases in size, both in diameter, and in the length of the chamber. The Nautilus, requiring to keep the secreting portion of its mantle applied to the lip of the shell, finds the chamber in which it dwells gradually becoming inconveniently long for it, and therefore builds up a wall behind itself, and continues its work of enlarging its premises in front. Each of these walls, concave in front, towards the mouth of the shell, and concave behind, acts as a strong girder and support of the arch of the shell against the inward pressure of deep water: and it was formerly supposed that each successive chamber so constructed and vacated remained filled with air, and thus became an additional float by which the constantly increasing weight of the growing shell was counter-balanced. By this beautiful adjustment of augmented floating power to increased weight, the buoyancy of the shell would be secured and its specific gravity maintained as nearly as possible equal to that of the surrounding water. This adjustment does probably take place, but in a somewhat different manner. As the Nautilus inhabits a depth of from twenty to forty fathoms, it is evident that the air within its shell would be displaced by the pressure of such a column of water. Accordingly, in every instance of the capture of a Nautilus the chambers of its shell have been found filled with water. It is not improbable that the fluid they contain may be less compressed, and exert less pressure from within outwards than that of the external superincumbent column of water, and that by this unbalanced pressure--under the same hydro-dynamic law which governs its mode of self-propulsion when swimming, and possibly in some degree within the control of the animal--the latter is relieved of much of the weight of its shell. When the Nautilus is at the bottom of the sea its movement is like that of a snail crawling along upon the ground with its shell above it. The shell, in proportion to the size of the animal that inhabits it, is a heavy one, and unless it were rendered semi-buoyant, its owner's strength would be severely taxed by the effort to drag it along. By the means indicated this portable domicile is borne lightly above the body of the Nautilus, without in any way impeding its progress.

"At 100 fathoms the pressure exceeds 265 lbs. to the square inch. Empty bottles, securely corked, and sunk with weights beyond 100 fathoms, are always crushed. If filled with liquid the cork is driven in, and the liquid replaced by salt water; and in drawing the bottle up again the cork is returned to the neck of the bottle, generally in a reversed position."--Sir F. Beaufort, quoted by Dr. S. P. Woodward in his 'Manual of the Mollusca.'

a a, Partitions; b b, chambers; b', the last-formed chamber, in which the animal lives; c c, the siphuncle; d, attaching muscle; e e, the hollow arms; f f, retractile tentacles; g, muscular disk, or foot; h, the eye; i, position of funnel.]

The chambers are all connected by a membranous tube slightly coated with nacre, which is connected with a large sac in the body of the animal, near the heart, and passes through a circular orifice and a short projecting tube in the centre of each partition wall, till it ends in the smallest chamber at the inner extremity of the shell. Dean Buckland believed this "syphon" to be an hydraulic apparatus acting as a "fine adjustment" of the specific gravity of the shell, by admitting water within it when expanded, and excluding it when contracted. As it contains an artery and vein near its origin at the mantle, Professor Owen has regarded it as subservient to the maintenance of a low vitality in the vacated portion of the shell. Dr. Henry Woodward is of the opinion that, whilst in the early life of the Nautilus this siphuncle forms the main point of attachment between the animal and its shell, it is in the adult "simply an aborted embryonal organ whose function is now filled by the shell-muscles, but which in the more ancient and straight-shelled representatives of the group (the Orthoceratites) was not merely an embryonal but an important organ in the adult."

Every one knows the shell of the Pearly Nautilus. It may be purchased at any shell-shop in a seaside watering-place, and is imported by hundreds every year from Singapore. It is abundant in the waters of the Indian Archipelago, especially about the Molucca and Philippine Islands, and on the shores of New Caledonia and the Fiji and Solomon Islands. It has also been found alive on Pemba Island, near Zanzibar. It seems strange, therefore, that until about half a century ago hardly anything was known of the animal that secretes and inhabits it. Rumphius, a Dutch naturalist, in his 'Rarities of Amboyna,' published, in 1705, a description of one with an engraving, incorrect in drawing, and deficient in detail; and until 1832 this was the only information which existed concerning it. The great Cuvier never saw one, and being acquainted only with the two-gilled cephalopods, he regarded the head-footed mollusks as absolutely isolated from all other animals in the kingdom of nature, even from the other classes of the mollusca. It seemed, however, to Professor Owen, then only nineteen years of age, that in the only living representative of the four-gilled order, Nautilus pompilius, might be found the "missing link." When, therefore, in the year 1824, his fellow-student, Mr. George Bennett, was about to sail from England to the Polynesian Islands, young Richard Owen earnestly charged his friend to do his utmost to obtain, and bring home in alcohol, a specimen of the much-coveted Pearly Nautilus. The opportunity did not occur till one warm and calm Monday evening, the 24th of August, 1829, when a living Nautilus was seen at the surface of the water not far distant from the ship, in Marekini Bay, on the south-west coast of the Island of Erromango, New Hebrides, in the South Pacific Ocean. It looked like a dead tortoise-shell cat, as the sailors said. As it began to sink as soon as it was observed, it was struck at with a boat-hook, and was thus so much injured that it died shortly after being taken on board the ship. The shell was destroyed, but the soft body of the animal was preserved in spirits, and great was the joy of Mr. Owen when, in July, 1831, Mr. Bennett arrived with it in England, and presented it to the Royal College of Surgeons. Mr. Owen was then Assistant-Conservator of the Museum of the College under Mr. Clift, who was afterwards his father-in-law. He immediately commenced to anatomise, describe, and figure his rare acquisition, and in the early part of 1832 published the result of his work in the form of a masterly treatise, which proved to be the foundation of his future fame.

I need hardly say that before the nacreous layer of the shell from which this animal takes its name is made visible, an outer deposit of dense calcareous matter has to be removed by hydrochloric acid: the pearly surface thus exposed is then easily polished.

It is so interesting to most of us to know something of the early work of our greatest men, and of the tide in their affairs, which, taken at the flood, led on to fortune, that I hope I may be excused for referring to the period when the distinguished chief of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, the great comparative anatomist, the unrivalled palaeontologist, the illustrious physiologist, the venerable and venerated friend of all earnest students, was beginning to attract the attention, and to receive the approbation of his seniors as a promising young worker. In Messrs. Griffith and Pidgeon's Supplement to Cuvier's 'Mollusca and Radiata,' published in 1834, the treatise in question is thus mentioned: "We have much pleasure in referring to a most excellent memoir on Nautilus pompilius, by Mr. Owen, with elaborate figures of the animal, its shell, and various parts, published by direction of the Council of the College of Surgeons. The reader will find the most satisfactory information on the subject, and the scientific public will earnestly hope that the present volume will be the first of a similar series." This hope has been more than fulfilled. Dean Buckland, in his 'Bridgewater Treatise,' wrote of this work: "I rejoice in the present opportunity of bearing testimony to the value of Professor Owen's highly philosophical and most admirable memoir--a work not less creditable to the author than honourable to the Royal College of Surgeons, under whose auspices the publication has been so handsomely conducted."

Mr. Owen's investigations confirmed his previous supposition that the Pearly Nautilus is inferior in its organisation to octopus, sepia, or any other known cephalopod; that it is not isolated, but that it recedes towards the gasteropods, to which belong the snail, the periwinkle, &c., and that in some of its characters its structure is analogously related to the still lower annulosa, or worms. Mr. Owen was just about to start for Paris with the intention of presenting a copy of his book to his celebrated contemporary and friend, and of showing him his dissections of the Nautilus which had been the subject of his research, when he heard of Baron Cuvier's death. It must have been to him a great sorrow and a grievous disappointment.

The Pearly Nautilus, then, is a true cephalopod, in that it has its foot divided and arranged in segments around its head, but the form and number of these segments are very different from those of any other of its class. Instead of there being eight, as in the argonaut and octopus, or ten, as in sepia and the calamaries, the Nautilus has about ninety projecting in every direction from around the mouth. They are short, round, and tapering, of about the length and thickness of the fingers of a child. Some of them are retractile into sheaths, and they are attached to fleshy processes (which might represent the child's hand), overlying each other, and covering the mouth on each side. They have none of the suckers with which the arms and tentacles of all the other cuttles are furnished, but their annulose structure, like the rings of an earthworm's body, gives them some little prehensile power. None of these numerous finger-like segments of the foot are flattened out like the broad membranous expansions of the argonaut, and, in fact, the Nautilus is without any members which can possibly be regarded as sails to hoist, or as oars with which to row. It has a strong beak, like the rest of the cuttles; but it has no ink-sac, for its shell is strong enough to afford it the protection which its two-gilled relatives have to seek in concealment.

The Pearly Nautilus usually creeps, like a snail, along the bed of the sea. It lives at the bottom, and feeds at the bottom, principally on crabs; and, as Dr. S. P. Woodward says, in his 'Manual of the Mollusca,' "perhaps often lies in wait for them, like some gigantic sea-anemone, with outspread tentacles." The shape of its shell is not well adapted for swimming, but it can ascend to the surface, if it so please, in the same manner as can all the cuttles--namely, by the outflow of water from its locomotor tube. The statement that it visits the surface of the sea of its own accord is at present, however, unconfirmed by observation.

But, if the Pearly Nautilus is the inferior and poor relation of the argonaut, it lives in a handsome house, and comes of an ancient lineage. The Ammonites, whose beautiful whorled and chambered shells, and the casts of them, are so abundant in every stratum, especially in the lias, the chalk, and the oolite, had four gills also. These Ammonites and the Nautili were amongst the earliest occupants of the ancient deep; and, with the Hamites, Turrilites, and others, lived upon our earth during a great portion of the incalculable period which has elapsed since it became fitted for animal existence, and in their time witnessed the rise and fall of many an animal dynasty. But they are gone now; and only the fossil relics of more than two thousand species (of which 188 were Nautili) remain to tell how important a race they were amongst the inhabitants of the old world seas. They and their congeners of the chambered shells, however, left one representative which has lived on through all the changes that have taken place on the surface of this globe since they became extinct--namely, Nautilus pompilius, the Nautilus of the pearly shell--the last of the Tetrabranchs.

I need offer no apology for endeavouring to explain the difference between the Nautilus of the chambered shell and the argonaut with the membranous arms which it was supposed to use as sails, when Webster, in his great standard dictionary, describes the one and figures the other as one and the same animal; and when a writer of the celebrity of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes also blends the two in the following poem, containing a sentiment as exquisite as its science is erroneous. I hope the latter distinguished and accomplished author, whose delightful writings I enjoy and highly appreciate, will pardon my criticism. I admit that the beauty of the thought might well atone for its inaccuracy, (of which the author is conscious,) were it not that the latter is made so attractive that truth appears harsh in disturbing it.

"THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS."

"This is the ship of pearl, which poets feign Sails the unshadowed main, The venturous bark that flings On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings, In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, And coral reefs lie bare, Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl, Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim, dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed, Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, Child of the wandering sea, Cast from her lap forlorn! From the dead lips a clearer note is born Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn! While on mine ear it rings, Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:--

'Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low vaulted past; Let each new temple, nobler than the last, Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, Till thou at length art free, Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea.'"

BARNACLE GEESE--GOOSE BARNACLES.

The belief that some wild geese, instead of being hatched from eggs, like other birds, grew on trees and rotten wood has never been surpassed as a specimen of ignorant credulity and persistent error.