Nautilus and Ammonite. 13I 
while its long arms, thrust up into the air or down 
into the water, may have been thought to be masts 
or oars, so that the poets are not so much to be 
blamed, if they say as Wordsworth does— 
“ Spread, tiny Nautilus, the living sail 
Dive at thy choice, or catch the freshening gale.” 
Nearly allied to the Nautili are these beautiful 
fossil shells called Ammonites, from their fancied 
resemblance to the horns of a heathen deity or god, 
called Jupiter Ammon. These shells, at once the 
wonder and pride of geologists, are found in the 
chalk formations, and thousands of years must have 
passed away since they were inhabited by living 
creatures. The Nautili which swam and sported 
with them at the depths of the ocean, as is proved 
by the shells of many species found in the same 
chalky deposits, have still their living represen- 
tatives; but those winding galleries and pearly 
chambers once fragile as paper and brittle as glass, 
now turned into, and surrounded by solid stone 
are all shells of extinct species, and we can hardly 
see and handle them without some degree of awe 
and reverence; when we reflect on the great and 
wonderful changes that have passed over the earth 
since they were formed by a hand Divine, instinct 
