192 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



parts in their natural position, but even present to 

 our notice the muscular fibre, very little altered. 

 The whole contour of the animal is indeed accu- 

 rately determined, including the feelers projecting from 

 the head, the fins, the tail, and even a solidified 

 dark fluid once preserved within the body, and in- 

 tended to serve the living animal as a defence from 

 its enemies by enabling it to cloud the surrounding 

 water when attacked or desirous of concealment. 



The fossil known to Geologists by the name 

 Belemnite is the internal skeleton of a cephalopodous 

 animal very much like the cuttle-fish, but provided 

 not only with a solid framework for the attachment 

 of muscles, but also with an apparatus like that pos- 

 sessed by the nautilus and ammonite. The animal 

 appears, however, to have combined also in some 

 degree the characteristic peculiarities of several of 

 the more highly organized genera of cephalopods, and 

 perhaps was fitted for a condition of the sea in which 

 the enemies of such an animal were more numerous 

 and powerful, and its food less easily obtained, than 

 is the case at present. 



It is now known that the animal of the Belemnite 

 was naked, or rather that it was enclosed within a 

 muscular sheath, which formed a closed sac or bag 

 terminating above with the head. From around this 

 eight arms proceeded, whose length in the species ex- 

 amined seems to be about one-fourth part of the entire 

 length of the animal ; and each arm was provided 

 with from fifteen to twenty pair of hooks resembling 

 those now seen only in the most powerful and the 

 fiercest of the whole tribe of Cephalopoda, and used 

 to pierce the flesh of fishes and other animals, in 



