IN THE SEA 183 



Speaking of fossils, what do we make of the 

 ammonites and the belemnites, by some called 

 thunderbolts, that we crack out of our blue rocks 

 at Whitby and often elsewhere ? They surely 

 are extinct. Yes and no. A mollusc whose 

 mantle had developed in front into ten arms 

 covered with suckers like the single one of the 

 limpet elaborated the ammonite shell at the 

 proper season to cover her eggs. She sat in it, 

 perhaps, as the nautilus does to-day, and drifted 

 across the prehistoric sea bearing her eggs with 

 her. But later, it would seem, like a lady with 

 a fashionable hat, she over-elaborated her shell 

 till it was useless for its purpose, and after dragging 

 the costly ornament about for a few million years 

 the race that gave us our countless ammonite 

 shells became extinct. Not only do nautili and 

 devil-fish of more reasonable habits survive in 

 our seas, but they run to enormous size. Some of 

 them make two or more mouthfuls apiece for a 

 whale, and some have been encountered weighing 

 many tons and having tentacles fifteen and twenty 

 feet in length. 



The dry lecture is interrupted by the discovery 

 of a stranded squid. It is dead, but we can 

 squeeze from its siphon a jet of sepia, renewing it 

 again and again by pouring in water and pouring 

 it out again, richly coloured from the abundant 

 tube within. The flesh of the animal is of the same 

 flabby consistency that belongs to the other 

 molluscs, but the trunk of it contains a hard part, 



