Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot

by Philip Henry Gosse

Yet, though this is the normal and natural mode of production, both of the concentric line and of the spines, it would be illusory to conclude that they have been so produced in the present example. The entire formation of the Dione before us has been ab-normal and preter-natural: it has been created, not born: the whole development so legibly written on the shell has been prochronic.

There goes the Scorpion Stromb (Pteroceras scorpio), crawling over the rocks with protruded head and tentacles, and bearing his massive house on his back. This shelly house of his will afford us a good example of structural development.

The great dilated lip, and the long finger-like processes of its edge, had no existence in the youthful days of the shell; they are marks of adult age: when young, the shell was simply spiral, with a thin straight lip bounding a narrow aperture.

Observe also a far more beautiful creature by its side, the Tiger Cowry (Cypræa tigris). Its shell is now entirely enveloped in the meeting wings of the great fleshy mantle, which is mottled with changing hues; and its foot or crawling disk covers a space three or four times as large as the shell. On lifting it in our hand, the whole of this array of soft flesh has been rapidly retracted, and has wholly disappeared within that very narrow orifice, bordered with toothed projections, on the under side of the shell, which we can hardly believe capable of receiving a twentieth part of the bulk that has vanished within it. And now we see nothing but the shell, with its smooth rounded back, marked with dark spots, its white inferior surface cleft by this longitudinal denticulate aperture, and its brilliant porcellanous varnish over the whole.

Now here is evidence of change and progress again. This Cowry-shell is very unlike that of an Olive, with a simple spire, an oval body, a smooth thin lip, and a wide orifice; and as unlike that of a Nautilus. Yet it has passed through both of these stages before it was disguised as we see it now. When it escaped from the egg-shell, it was a minute Pteropod, with two great ciliated disks, inhabiting a transparent nautiloid shell, and swimming giddily about in a revolving fashion. By and by, the tiny shell increased, and the outer whorl lengthened, putting on a long-oval figure. Then—that is, after a considerable period occupied in increasing the dimensions of the shell in this form—it began to assume the adult appearance. The outer lip, which had hitherto been thin, gradually thickened and encroached upon the spire, and the mantle began to secrete and deposit on the outer surface the coat of glassy enamel.

At length the thickening of the lips proceeded to such an extent as almost to conceal the spire, and to reduce the aperture to a narrow line, the edges of which were now thickly plaited with the tooth-like ridges so characteristic of the genus. The lobes of the mantle now protrude through this aperture; and, expanding on each side, have deposited all over the exterior of the shell a coat of glassy enamel, studded with dark round spots or clouds, which entirely conceals the surface with the markings that were formerly visible upon it.

MUREX TENUISPINA.

Yonder Thorny Woodcock (Murex tenuispina) is a still more striking shell than either, and one whose periodic growths are peculiarly well marked. It is covered at regular intervals with rows of shelly spines, still longer and more numerous than those we lately admired in the Dione. Each series crowns a thickened ridge, which runs across the whorl, as regards the direction of its growth, but longitudinally as regards the general figure of the shell.