There is no union by muscle bands between shell and body. The arms simply hold it fast, and in such position that the eggs from the beginning are protected by being lodged in the coil of the shell, with the body between them and any harm.
The report of Madame Power's investigations was made by Professor Richard Owen before the Biological Society of Lon don in 1839, and the question of whose shell the Argonauta lived in was settled once for all. The cause of science took a mighty step forward. For this quiet student proved that observation, not argument, is the straightest road to truth.
Fourteen years later, in 1853, Muller identified and pub lished a full description of a tiny octopus, the male of Argonauta. Investigations of an earlier date had just demonstrated that the supposed parasite in the mantle cavity of the female is one of the eight arms of the male, modified as a bearer of the spermatophores. The arm ends in a whip-lash. In this is a passage through which the spermatophores pass out into the mantle cavity. A kind of spring in each spermatophore is released, scattering the dart like spermatozoa over the exposed ova. Union of sperm cell with ovum cell is called "fertilisation." Now the nidamental glands pour a viscid substance over the eggs, which hardens, forming a series of globular capsules, all joined together into a compound cluster, like a bunch of grapes. The useless hectoco tylised arm is now discarded. The egg cluster is crowded back into the spiral. Gradually its increasing size crowds the mollusk out of her seat. Then the egg mass. still firmly attached to the body of the female, floats upward in the water, until the young hatch and swim off as free individuals.
When the fragments of evidence were brought together they fitted so well that scientists wondered greatly at their own stupidity. For had not Aristotle told them that the polypi of
the Mediterranean had one arm swollen and distorted at the breeding season? Even the fishermen knew this. We now know the hectocotylised arm to be a constant character among all cephalopods except the pearly nautilus. In only three genera, however, is it detached.
443 The Argonaut. Paper Nautilus Picture the meek little eight-armed beast offering his hand to the lady Argonauta of his choice. She accepts it literally, snatches it, and swims away with it ; and that is the last he sees of her. He does not accompany her to the surface of the water.
Good sailors they must be, the argonauts, to have become distributed so wideIy over all warm seas. They are reported to be very plentiful on the northern coasts of Australia where they are cast up by winds during spawning season. The sea gulls devour them and their eggs, and the empty shells are carried off by the returning tides. Live argonauts are reported occasionally on the Florida coast; they abound among the Pacific Island coasts, in the Gulf of California, and about the Cape of Good Hope. Deep sea dredging brings them up most anywhere within 4o degrees of the equator. Fresh shells were taken up ninety miles from Narragansett Bay, R. I. A single specimen came ashore at Long Branch, N. J., and was studied alive for ten days in an aquarium.
For most of the year the Argonaut walks about on the sea bottom, carrying her shell aloft, still in the sure clasp of those two wing-like arms. To conchologists her life history is full of interest and charm. To poets and to all but the literal-minded she will always be: "The ocean Mab — the fairy of the sea," her fragile shell a dream ship, with purple sails, companion of the ship of pearl, the Chambered Nautilus.
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