i6 NATURAL SCIENCE. July. 1896. 



most instructive. That such remains are not more abundant may be 

 thought surprising, considering how prohfic most crustaceans prove 

 themselves to be, and that they frequently shed their entire integu- 

 ment. The reason for the scarcity may be found in the fact that they 

 are a food so very acceptable in the animal kingdom, and that even 

 the cast shells are devoured, either by their late owners or by other 

 creatures. 



In complimenting the vigorous official activity of some aged 

 American geologists. Dr. Woodward makes pathetic allusion to a rule 

 in our own Civil Service which shows scanty respect to age, for at a 

 definite date " Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred shears and 

 slits the thin-spun life." Free countries are ever famous for logical 

 consistency. That is why we in England consider that prime 

 ministers, archbishops, lord chancellors, are at the zenith of their 

 powers at sixty-five, while at that age we think it proper to dismiss 

 from office the geologist, the botanist, the palaeontologist, as though 

 the mystic date on a sudden turned into foolishness and flaccidity all 

 their ripe experience, their stores of knowledge, their energy, their 

 judgment and acumen. 



An Ancient Octopod. 



A VERY remarkable and beautiful fossil has been recently dug out 

 of the alluvium in the Museum of the Geological Society, London, 

 and figured and described by Dr. H. Woodward in<ithe May number 

 of its Quarterly Journal. It is no less than a complete octopus from the 

 Cretaceous beds of the Lebanon. Collected in 1842 by T. J. Newbold, 

 it was named in manuscript by J. de C. Sowerby in 1846, and 

 referred to in 1877 by Louis Lartet, since which time it has been 

 again buried and lost till rediscovered a few months ago. The 

 octopus, which bears Sowerby's name Calais newholdi, shows its eight 

 arms, each furnished with suckers, the umbrella or web, beaks, funnel, 

 fins, and ink-bag, and is in a singular state of preservation. The fins 

 which are triangular, one on either side of the body, and not united 

 behind, form the diagnostic character of the genus, and their wing- 

 like appearance has suggested its name, for Calais was one of the 

 winged sons of Boreas. The specimen is the oldest known repre- 

 sentative of this division of the Cephalopoda. 



