Paul Maloney  age 11, of Jackson, Ohio,

What kind of animal is a nautilus?

You might say the sailing ship was invented by this smallish, octopus type animal. In the dim past, the nautilus discovered how to use a shell as a sail. The shell is a beautiful job of delicate scrolls, It catches the wind and takes the nautilus scudding over the bounding waves. The nautilus has plenty of tentacles, some are used as oars, others for steering. The brave little creature was named nautilus from an old word for sailor, which seems fair and proper.

There are two distinct branches of the nautilus family. One is native to the deep waters of the Pacific.  The other scuds over the Atlantic and the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Both belong to the great tribe of mollusks: Both have soft heads and bodies with plenty of tentacles, However, their shells are vastly different:

The Pacific sailor is called the chambered, or pearly nautilus. He is rarely seen though his shell is often washed up on a beach, The outside is like porcelain, banded in brown and white. The inside is glossy. pearl white A big. shell may measure ten inches across.

There is a chamber at one end of the shell. This is the last home iri which the sailor sheltered his soft boar. A cross section of the shell shows smaller and smaller chambers. They are the rooms built to shelter the sailor as he grew. Full grown, he may have measured seven inches, Only the soft body was housed in the shell chamber.. The head and 90 tentacles were outside.

The Mediterranean sailor is called the paper nautilus or the argonaut.  The snow white sail shell is paper thin and frail. It is built only by the female nautilus and only when she has babies to tend. The delicate shell  is about 8 inches wide and built between two outstretch

People around the Mediterranean watched the snow white nautilus skim over the blue waves. They call a bold sailor the argonaut in honor of Jason’s famous ship. They did not know that the little ship was really a baby carriages it is actually an egg case. As she skims over the water, Mama is taking the babies out for air and sunshine,

When they hatch they will sink in the water. The boy babies will never grow bigger than one inch and never build a sail. The girl babies will grow to be 8 inches and stay below until egg laying time, Then they too will build a white baby carriage and scud over the blue waves.