22 Professor Buckland on Pterodactylm Mdcronyx, 



insectivorous pterodactyles. He conceives also, that many of 

 the bones from Tilgate Forest, hitherto referred to birds, may 

 belong to this extinct family of anomalous reptiles : and, fi^om 

 their presence in these various localities, he infers that the genus 

 pterodactyle existed throughout the entire period of the de- 

 position of the great Jura-limestone formation, from the lias to 

 the chalk inclusive, expressing doubts as to the occurrence of 

 any remains of birds, before the commencement of the tertiary 

 strata. 



II. Fossil Ink mid Pens. — An indurated black animal sub- 

 stance, like that in the ink-bag of the cuttle-fish, occurs in the 

 lias at Lyme Regis ; and a drawing made with this fossil pig- 

 ment, four years ago, was pronounced by an eminent artist to 

 have been tinted with sepia. It is nearly of the colour and 

 consistence of jet, and very fragile, with a bright splintery frac- 

 ture ; its powder is brown, like that of a painter's sepia ; it oc- 

 curs in single masses, nearly of the shape and size of a small 

 gall-bladder, broadest at the base, and gradually contracted to- 

 wards the neck. These ink-bags are attached to the remains of 

 two unknown moUuscae ; one apparently an orthoceratite, the 

 other a loligo. 



1. In the first of these the ink-bag is surrounded by a thin 

 envelope of brilliant nacre, which formed the lining of a shell, 

 having the external shape and wavy surface of an orthoceratite. 

 In the most perfect specimen the author possesses, the uppei- 

 chamber is nearly five inches deep, and two inches in diameter; 

 within it was lodged the ink-bag and other soft parts of the ani- 

 mal's body ; the bottom of the cavity terminates in a series of 

 circular transverse plates, like the chambered alveolus of a be- 

 lemnite, packed close on each other like a pile of watch-glasses. 

 The uppermost of these plates is in immediate contact with ihc 

 base of the ink-bag, the rest diminish rapidly in size, and nearly 

 in the same proportion in which the plates diminish in the be- 

 lemnite ; beyond the lowest of them, no elongation of the shell, 

 nor traces of any sheath, have yet been found ; the external 

 shell, in most specimens, has entirely perished, but its nacre is 

 always preserved, and is usually compressed to a thin flat sack 



