As he sits loosely in his shell, he was supposed by some naturalists to be a parasite enjoying the house of the unknown murdered owner; but this is perfectly erroneous, as the young in the egg already show the rudiments of the future shell, and the full-grown animal repairs by reproduction any injury that may have happened to it.
The tetrabranchiate cephalopods, or Nautili, are very differently constructed from their dibranchiate relations. Here, instead of mighty muscular arms, furnished with suckers or raptorial claws, we find a number of small, sheathed, and retractile tentacles (_f_), surrounding the mouth in successive series, and amounting to little short of a hundred. The head is further provided with a large muscular disk (_g_), which, besides acting as a defence to the opening of the shell, serves also in all probability as an organ for creeping along the ground, like the foot in the Gasteropods. The mandibles are strengthened by a dense calcareous substance fit to break up the defensive armour of the crustacean or shell-fish on which the animal feeds. There is no ink-bag, no organ of hearing, and the eyes (_h_) are pedunculated, and of a more simple structure. The handsome pearl-mother and spirally wound shell is divided by transverse partitions (_a_), perforated in the centre, into numerous chambers (_b_). The animal takes up its abode in the foremost and largest (_b′_), but sends a communicating tube or siphon (_c_) through all the holes of the partitions to the very extremity of the spirally wound shell. Though the empty conch was frequently found swimming on the waters of the Indian Ocean, or cast ashore on the Moluccas or New Guinea, yet it was only in 1829 that the animal was known with any certainty, one having been caught alive by Mr. George Bennett, near the New Hebrides, which, preserved in spirits, is now in the museum of the College of Surgeons. Since then three different species have been found to abound in the waters of the above-named archipelago, of New Caledonia, and of the Feejee and Solomon Islands, where they principally sojourn among the coral reefs at depths of from three to six fathoms. They usually remain at the bottom of the water, where they creep along rather quickly, supporting themselves upon their tentacula, with their head downwards and the shell raised above. After stormy weather, as it becomes more calm, they may be seen in great numbers floating upon the surface of the sea with the head protruded, and the tentacula resting upon the water, the shell at the same time being undermost; they remain, however, but a short time sailing in this manner, as they can easily return to their situation at the bottom of the sea, by merely drawing in their tentacles and upsetting the shell. They are caught in baskets by the natives, who eat them roasted as a great delicacy.