Nautilus and Ammonite. 131 



wliile its long arms^ thrust up into tlie 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.'* 



I^early 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 Nautih 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 



