Chambered Nautilus
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| Nautilus | ||||||||||||||||
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| Missing image Nautilus_shell.jpg Nautilus shell Nautilus shell | ||||||||||||||||
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| Nautilus pompilius suluensis Tadashige Habe/Takashi Okutani, 1988 |
The Chambered Nautilus (Nautilus pompilius suluensis) is a typical species of nautilus. The shell, when cut away as in the photograph below, reveals a lining of lustrous mother-of-pearl, and displays a nearly perfect equiangular spiral with pleasing proportions that bear a mathematical relationship to the golden section. Small natural history collections were common in mid-1800s Victorian homes, and chambered nautilus shells were popular decorations.
The Chambered Nautilus in literature and art
The Chambered Nautilus is the title and subject of a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he admires the "ship of pearl" and the "silent toil/That spread his lustrous coil/Still, as the spiral grew/He left the past year's dwelling for the new." He concludes with the peroration:
- Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
- As the swift seasons roll!
- Leave thy low-vaulted past!
- Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
- Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
- Till thou at length art free,
- Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
A painting by Andrew Wyeth, entitled "Chambered Nautilus," shows a woman in a canopied bed; the composition and proportions of the bed and the window behind it mirror those of a chambered nautilus lying on a nearby table.
