nothing of the sort; and if you go to him to learn navigation, you will
never be much of a sailor; he may teach you how to sink to the bottom and
rise again, and that kind of knowledge might be worth something to you
if you could breathe under water; and he might teach you how to swim, but
not how to sail, for in spite of all poetic theories, he does the former
and not the latter. Most usually he walks about at the bottom of the sea
on his long arms, something like the Cuttle-fish, feeding on the marine
vegetation; the shell is then uppermost; if we could look inside of it we
should see numerous little chambers or cells, the larger and outermost
of which only are inhabited by the mollusk, the others being filled with
air render the whole light and buoyant. Through the centre of these
chambers, down to the smallest of them, runs a membranous tube which can
be exhausted or filled with fluid at the pleasure of the animal, and
the difference thus effected in the weight of the shell enables it to
sink or swim; in the latter case, up it goes to the surface, and “keel
upwards from the deep,” emerges, as the poet has said, but once there it
soon reverses its position. The shell becomes like a boat it is true,
but its inhabitant neither points a sail nor plies the oar, but propels
itself along stem foremost by a muscular action, which by alternately
compressing and loosening a kind of siphon, throws out jets or gushes of
water, which by the resistance they meet with from the surrounding fluid,
give the desired onward motion, and away the swimmer goes, his long arms
gathered closely together, and streaming behind like the tail of a comet,
and its round eyes keeping a sharp look-out on either side. Should it
espy danger, the body and limbs are withdrawn into the shell, and the
fluid driven through the central tube, so as to compress the air in the
pearly cells, and down sinks the swimmer once again to his native depths,
where
“The floor is of sand like the mountain drift,
And the pearl shells’ spangle the flinty snow;
And from coral rocks the sea-plants lift
Their boughs where the tides and billows flow,
The water is calm and still below.
For the winds and waves are absent there;
And the sands are bright as the stars that glow
In the motionless fields of upper air.
And life in rare and beautiful forms,
Is sporting amid those bowers of stone,
And is safe, when the wrathful spirit of storms,
Has made the top of the waves his own.”
We give below two figures of the Argonaut, one of which represents him
crawling at the bottom of the sea, and the other swimming on the surface.
[Illustration]
The True, or Pearly Nautilus, (_N. Pompilius_,) the origin of whose
specific name we have been unable to discover, is much like the Argonaut
in appearance and general construction; the shell is externally smoother
and more iridescent, it is also generally somewhat thicker than the
former kind, and has internally more chambers or divisions; its pearly
lustre renders it a beautiful ornament, and the large size it frequently
attains a very conspicuous one. Its inhabitant has several peculiarities
of organization, which distinguish it from the Argonauts, but into these
we need not enter; neither can we pause to describe the other species
of nautili, the shells of which, like those of the Cowry and other
univalves, are covered with a membrane which hides their beauty. This
membrane or mantle sometimes extends some distance beyond the edge of
the shell, and, being of a light and filmy appearance, may have been
mistaken for a sail hoisted by the creature to catch the breeze, while
its long arms, thrust up into the air or down into the water, may have
been thought to be masts or oars, so that the poets are not so much to be
blamed, if they say as Wordsworth does.
“Spread, tiny Nautilus, the living sail,
Dive at thy choice, or catch the freshening gale.”
Nearly allied to the Nautili are these beautiful fossil shells called
Ammonites, from their fancied resemblance to the horns of a heathen deity
or god, called Jupiter Ammon. These shells, at once the wonder and pride
of geologists, are found in the chalk formations, and thousands of years
must have passed away since they were inhabited by living creatures.
The Nautili which swam and sported with them at the depths of the ocean,
as is proved by the shells of many species found in the same chalky
deposits, have still their living representatives, but those winding
galleries and pearly chambers once fragile as paper and brittle as glass,
now turned into, and surrounded by solid stone, are all shells of extinct
species, and we can hardly see and handle them without some degree of
awe and reverence; when we reflect on the great and wonderful changes
that have passed over the earth since they were formed by a hand divine,
instinct with the breath of life, and then to be embedded in the rock
as everlasting characters by which the unborn generations of men might
read in history of those changes, and of the providential dealings of God
with his creatures. Of these Ammonites, and other fossil shells, much
more will have to be said in our proposed geological volume; the poem
which follows will very appropriately conclude the above remarks, and
our present little work on shells—beautiful, wonderful shells! useful,
ornamental, instructive! The subject is one which we would earnestly
invite our young readers to study: it is but here introduced; we have
picked up a few, very few, of the wonders and beauties of conchology, and
presented them to their notice in the hope that they may be induced to
desire a more intimate acquaintance with this branch of natural science,
which has been hitherto greatly neglected. To understand it thoroughly,
much attention and perseverance will be required, but even a slight
acquaintance with it will yield both pleasure and profit to the mind.
[Illustration: NAUTILUS.]
[Illustration: AMMONITE.]
THE NAUTILUS AND THE AMMONITE.
The Nautilus and the Ammonite,
Were launched in storm and strife;
Each sent to float in its tiny boat,
On the wide, wild sea of life.
And each could swim on the ocean’s brim,
And anon its sails could furl,
And sink to sleep in the great sea deep,
In a palace all of pearl.
And their’s was a bliss more fair than this,
That we feel in our colder time;
For they were rife in a tropic life,
In a brighter, happier clime.
They swam ’mid isles whose summer smiles
No wintry winds annoy;
Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
Whose life was only joy.
They roam’d all day through creek and bay,
And travers’d the ocean deep;
And at night they sank on a coral bank,
In its fairy bowers to sleep.
And the monsters vast of ages past,
They beheld in their ocean caves;
And saw them ride in their power and pride,
And sink in their billowy graves.
Thus hand in hand, from strand to strand,
They sail’d in mirth and glee;
Those fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
Twin creatures of the sea.
But they came at last to a sea long past,
And as they reach’d its shore,
The Almighty’s breath spake out in death,
And the Ammonite liv’d no more.
And the Nautilus now in its shelly prow,
As o’er the deep it strays,
Still seems to seek in bay and creek,
Its companion of other days.
And thus do we, in life’s stormy sea,
As we roam from shore to shore;
While tempest-tost, seek the lov’d—the lost,
But find them on earth no more!
G. F. RICHARDSON.
[Illustration: Plate I.]
[Illustration: Plate II.]
[Illustration: Plate III.]
[Illustration: Plate IV.]
[Illustration: Plate V.]
[Illustration: Plate VI.]
[Illustration: Plate VII.]
[Illustration: Plate VIII.]
INDEX.
PAGE.
INTRODUCTION.
What are Shells iii
Conchology iv
Beauty and Value of Shells vi
Uses of Shells viii
The Inhabitants of Shells xi
Malacology _ib_
Classification of Shells xii
Taking and Preserving Shells xiii
The Cabinet _ib_
On Cleaning and Polishing Shells xv
Fossil Shells _ib_
UNIVALVES.
The Common Snail 18
Fresh-water Shells 23
The Whelk 26
Rock Shells 27
Periwinkle 29
Trochus, or Top-Shell 31
Cones, Volutes, Mitres, and Olives 35
Cowries 38
BIVALVES.
The Oyster 41
Pearls 49
The Mussel and the Cockle 51
Scallop Shells 57
Limpits 59
Bock-borers 61
MULTIVALVES.
The Chitons 63
Barnacles 64
Cuttle Fish 67
Nautilus and Ammonite 71
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