410 NOTES ON A TOUR IN ICELAND. 



the Pearly Nautilus. Every body has heard of this wonderful sailor, who steers 

 about upon the ocean with all the skill of an accomplished mariner. The shell 

 which contains this animal is very large, and is divided into several compart- 

 ments, in the external of which only does the animal live. The animal which 

 inhabits this shell is a very curious-looking one, and resembles in some measure 

 one of its congeners, the well-known Cuttle-fish. On account of their organs of 

 progression being fixed in their heads, they are called Cephalopods. These, then, 

 are the organs which the Nautilus uses when sailing along upon the wide and 

 open sea. Two of its long legs it stretches in the air for a sail, whilst the others 

 are occasionally used as oars. 



I have here some fossils which are very abundant in the strata of Yorkshire, 

 called Ammonites ; they look like Snakes curled up, with their heads cut off; and 

 there is a tradition at Whitby, where these fossils are very abundant in the sea, 

 that formerly that town was overrun with Serpents, and that some good Catholic, 

 whose sanctity permitted him to perform miracles, in one day cut off all their 

 heads and drove them into the sea, where they became petrified. Be this as it 

 may, they are found at other places besides Whitby, and some of them are 

 enormously large, being as much as six feet in diameter. Now when one of these 

 is cut across, we find that it presents the same appearance as the shell of the 

 Pearly Nautilus, divided into several compartments ; and there is no doubt that 

 these fossilised bodies were once the abodes of animals similarly constituted ; and 

 were probably the only mariners that navigated those seas, which geologists tell 

 us existed, not days but ages, before Man inhabited the earth. 



C To be continued. J 



NOTES ON AN ORNITHOLOGICAL TOUR IN ICELAND IN THE 

 SUMMER OF 1837. 



By W. Proctor, 

 Subcurator of the Durham University Museum. 



On my return home, a few days ago, I found your letter, and am sorry that I 

 had not an opportunity of giving it earlier attention. With great pleasure I send 

 you some observations I made on the birds in Iceland last summer. I will 

 transmit them as I made them at the time, and you can correct them as you 

 think proper, if worthy inserting in your valuable Journal. 



How beautifully are the works of Nature carried on in those remote regions ! 

 It would strike every beholder with surprise to see the different species all breed- 



