208 THE BELEMNITE. 



One of the most common fossils of the chalk is a 

 conical stone, generally of a brown colour, called belem- 

 nite. Every locality of the chalk contains these bodies, 

 and some limestones on the continent are 

 almost wholly composed of them. The be- 

 lemnite greatly varies in form, but always 

 terminates in a point, and has at the oppo- 

 site end a conical cavity, in which is situated 

 a shell of like form, divided into chambers. 

 It is, in fact, the bone of a creature allied 

 to the cuttle-fish. 



It has already been stated, that the com- 

 mon cuttle-fish, and other creatures of the I 

 same class, are provided with a peculiar in- 

 ternal provision, containing a black and viscid |j^ 

 ink, \vhich defends them from their enemies 

 by rendering the water opaque. Now, it 

 could scarcely be supposed that so delicate a substance as 

 the ink could be preserved in a fossil state, yet nume- 

 rous specimens have been recently discovered in the 

 lias of Lyme Regis, in which the ink-bags are thus 

 preserved, still distended, as when they formed parts 

 of living bodies. 



Cuvier describes the ink of the recent cuttle-fish, as 

 being a dense fl.uid of the consistence of pap, suspended 



