CEPHALOPODA. sly 
the dibranchiate Cephalopods, two species of Argonaut have been found in the newer 
tertiary formations on the Continent; and two genera belonging to the family 
Belemnitide occur in the beds of the Paris basin, and in the Eocene formations of 
England. The remains of one of these last are very closely allied to the recent Sepia, 
and have been generally referred to that genus. M. Voltz, in his ‘Observations sur 
les Bélemnites,’ pointed out certain differences which induced him to propose a new 
genus, named by him “ Belosepia,” for their reception. The French Paleeontologists 
reject this genus as having been proposed on insufficient grounds ; but, for the reasons 
stated in a subsequent part, it ought, as it appears to me, to be retained. The other 
remains found in the Paris basin, connect Belosepia with Belemnite; and the genus 
Beloptera has heen established by M. Deshayes for their reception. Both these 
genera occur in the London clay and in the Bracklesham sands ; and they, together 
with certain remains found in the neighbourhood of London, and described by Mr. 
James Sowerby in the Mineral Conchology as Leloptera anomala, and for the reception 
of which I have proposed the new genus Belemnosis, are the only remains of dibran- 
chiate Cephalopods which as yet have been found in the tertiary formations of England. 
That these animals fulfilled in the ancient seas the office of repressing animal life 
cannot be doubted. The living Cephalopods are voracious in the extreme; and, as 
we find that throughout the transition and secondary groups the number of the 
zoophagous Trachelipods is small in comparison with that of the phytophagous Mollusca, 
it is not unreasonable to seek in the Cephalopods for that check upon an excessive 
merease of submarine life, which the other zoophagous molluscs were too inconsiderable 
in number to afford.* 
There is scarcely any class in the animal kingdom of the anatomy and habits of 
which zoologists have so long remained ignorant, or of which the systematic arrange- 
ments proposed have been so conflicting as the class Cephalopoda. Composed, as it 
is, of animals in their external construction and appearance remote from all others, 
and widely differing among themselves, we need not feel surprised at the confusion 
which characterises the older systems, based, as they all were, more or less, on artificial 
characters, derived from the various conditions of the shell, or from modifications of 
the dermal system; and the confusion was increased by the introduction among 
the Cephalopods of numerous microscopic chambered shells, to which M. d’Orbigny 
gave the name Foraminifera, but which the recent investigations of Dujardin 
show to have been constructed by an inferior class of animals, belonging or allied to 
the Zoophyta, and which he has named Rhizopoda. It would be foreign to the purpose 
to enter here into any history or comparison of the different systems of arrangement 
which have been proposed. In the eleventh volume of Lamarck’s ‘ Histoire Naturelle 
des animaux sans vertebres,’ edited by MM. Deshayes and Milne Edwards the reader 
* See Dr. Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i, chap. xv. 
