520 Zoological Proceed Ings of Societies, 



gested bones and scales of fishes occur abundantly in these faecal masses. 

 The scales are referrible to the Dapedium politum, and other fish th?.t 

 occur in the lias; the bones are those of fish, and also of small IchtJiyo- 

 sauri. The interior of these bezoars is arranged in spiral folds; iheir 

 exterior also bears impressions received from the convolutions of tho in- 

 testines of the living animals. In many of the entire skeletons of yuung 

 Ichthyosauri^ the bezoars are seen within the ribs and near the pelvis: 

 these must probably have been included w^ithin the animal's body at the 

 moment of his death. The authour found, three years ^o, a similar ball 

 of faecal matter, in the collection of Mr. Mantell, from the strata of Tilgate 

 Forest, which abound in bones of Ichthyosauri and other large reptiles; 

 and he conjectures that these bezoars exist wherever the remains of PZe- 

 siosauri are abundant. 



Fossil Sepia. — An indurated black animal substance, like that in the 

 ink-bag of the cuttle-fish, occurs in the lias at Lyme Regis; and a draw- 

 ing made with this fossil pigment, three years ago, was pronounced by 

 an eminent artist to have been tinted with Sepia. It is nearly of the 

 colour and consistence of jet, and very fragile, with a bright splintery 

 fracture ; its powder is brown, like that of the painter's Sepia; it occurs 

 in single masses, nearly of the shape and size of a small gall-bladder, 

 broadest at the base and gradually contracted towards the neck; these are 

 always surrounded by a thin nacreous case, brilliant as the most vivid 

 Lumachella; the nacre seems to have formed the lining of a fibrous thin 

 shelly substance, which together with this nacreous lining was prolonged 

 into a hollow cone like that of a belemnite, beyond the neck of the ink- 

 bag ; close to the base of the ink-bag there is a series of circular trans- 

 verse plates and narrow chambers, resembling the chambered alveolus 

 within the cone of a belemnite; but beyond the apex of this alveolus, no 

 spathose body has been found. The authour infers, that the animal from 

 which these fossil ink-bags are derived, was some unknown Cephalopode, 

 nearly allied in its internal structure to the inhabitant of the Belemnite; 

 the circular form of the septa showing that they cannot be referred to the 

 Molluscous inhabitant of any J^autilus or Comu-ammonis. 



