Fossil Crocodile at Whitby. 53 1 



that is the very small proportion of these shells which exhibit 

 any traces of reproduced parts : for I cannot believe this cir- 

 cumstance to be accounted for upon the supposition that re- 

 paired specimens are not sent to this country, because the 

 animal, be it what it may, mends in so workmanlike a man- 

 ner, adapting the renewed portions so accurately and evenly 

 to the edges of the breach, that the flaw, even if detected, 

 would not lessen the market price of the shell. How con- 

 stantly do we observe traces of the reparative process upon 

 the lips of Fusi, Pleurotomae, Volutag, &c. ; and, as we know 

 the Argonaut, while inhabited by the Ocythbe, is exposed to 

 accidents, if that animal possesses the power of renewing the 

 shell, why are instances of the kind so rare ? But, if the 

 lawful tenant of the Argonaut dwells in the depths of the ocean, 

 and does not visit the surface, we have a ready solution of 

 this difficulty, since the very same conditions which have kept 

 us in ignorance upon this point, furnish the most satisfactory 

 reason for so frail a production being rarely liable to those 

 accidents from external violence to which so many of the 

 testaceous Molluscs are exposed. 



In offering these few observations, I have not attempted to 

 discuss the merits of the question at large, or to enter upon 

 the mass of evidence which has been brought forward either on 

 one side or the other, except in those particulars which bear 

 directly upon the points immediately under consideration. It 

 is most probable that, before long, I shall have again to revert 

 to the subject; and, in the mean time, I cannot help expressing a 

 hope that all conchologists, or, indeed, I may say all cultivators 

 of natural history, who may chance to fall in with these re- 

 marks, will examine such specimens of the Paper Nautilus as 

 they have access to, noting with care any indications of renewed 

 parts, the region in which the injury has been sustained, and 

 the nature of the reproduced portions ; communicating the 

 result of such observation to the public through some scien- 

 tific channel. 



Mr. Broderip thus terminates a paper on the animal 

 of the Argonaut, in the fourth volume of the Zoological 

 Journal, page 66. : — " There is not, perhaps, sufficient evidence 

 to convict the subject of our memoir of piracy, but there is 

 quite enough to make us strongly doubt the assertion, that 

 6 he is his own industrious shipwright/ " 



Turning to the consideration of the beings of another era, 

 we have at Jig. 65., the representation of the head of a Cro- 

 codile (? Steneosaurus) lately discovered in the lias at Whitb} r , 

 and a very nicely executed drawing of which I have re- 

 ceived from Viscountess Sidmouth, taken from the original 



