186 



INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



To this division belonged the Belcmnite {Fig. 176), whose 

 remains are abundant in the white limestone of the County 



Fig. 175. — LoLioopsis. 



Antrim. The flinty conical body we now behold constituted 

 part of the internal skeleton of the living animal. The remains 

 of a Belemnite have been found in England in such a state of 

 preservation as to show the head, the ai-ms, the ink-bag, and 

 the internal shell.* From a careful examination of its struc- 

 ture, Mr. Owen is of opinion that it possessed the power of 

 swimming backward and forward with great vigour and pre- 

 cision, could rise swiftly and stealthily to infix its claws into 

 the belly of a fish, and then perhaps as swiftly dart do^vn, 

 drag its prey to the bottom, and devour it. How strange it 

 is to gaze upon that fossil entombed in masses of limestone, 

 and, in imagination, picture that flinty structure gifted with 

 life, and forming part of a carnivorous animal, who, in the 

 primaeval seas, ere these lands were upheaved from the bed 

 of ocean, earned on his career of rapine, the voracious de- 

 stroyer of the weaker inhabitants of the deep ! 



• Owen, pages 337, 339. 



