254 CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 



the bones of some marine creatures. It is certain they 

 differ totally from the bones of any land animals at pre- 

 sent in the island ; and we have no reason to imagine 

 that this country was possessed anciently of any other 

 land animals than what it is at present, unless we should 

 give way to Dr. Burnet's hypothesis, or some such other 

 invention. I have also two fossils, which seem to be 

 fragments of fish-jaws petrified, each of them having 

 their teeth (to wit, toad-stones, or the Occldedi serpi of the 

 Maltese) placed in their natural order, as they are in the 

 Lupus, and probably in some other fish. I have likewise 

 discovered very elegant stones of those kinds which I 

 have called Siliquastrum and Punctularia. As for the 

 Cornua Hammonis, I am now satisfied they are all of the 

 nautilus kind, and of such like shells ; but, as you say, 

 what is become of all these species, if they are petrified 

 shells ? I say they are all of the nautilus kind, not that 

 any of them scarce resemble the known species of Nautili 

 (for such as do have been called by Calceolarius and 

 Morcardo Nautili, &c., and not Cornua Hammonis), but 

 because they consist of several articulations, which is a 

 structure agrees with no other shells but the Nautili. 

 The sutures upon them, which Boccone and others com- 

 pare to oak-leaves, are nothing else but the commissures 

 of the joints, and these joints nothing else but the spar, 

 or other stone, filling the cavities of the cells in the 

 nautilus ; and this I conclude from one or two specimens 

 I have found, which have the shell still remaining in the 

 interstices of the joints. That figure of the joints which 

 I compared to vertebrae is acquired from the shape of 

 the septum, or partition in the shell. I think Olaus 

 Wormius was the first that compared any Cornua Ham- 

 monis to a nautilus. 



Oxford, October 7, 92. 



