NAUTILUS POMPILIUS. 239 



geology; for it enables us to assert, with a confidence we 

 could not otherwise have assumed, that the animals by which 

 all fossil Nautili were constructed, belonged to the existing 

 family of Cephalopodous Mollusks, allied to the common 

 Cuttle Fish. It leads us farther to infer, that the infinitely 

 more numerous species of the family of Ammonites, and 

 other cognate genera of Multilocular shells, were also con- 

 structed by animals, in whose economy they held an office 

 analogous to that of the existing shell of the Nautilus Pompi- 

 lius. We therefore entirely concur with Mr, Owen, that 

 not only is the acquisition of this species peculiarly accepta- 

 ble, from its relation to the Cephalopods of the present crea- 

 tion; but that it is, at the same time, the living type of a vast 

 tribe of organized beings, whose fossihzed remains testify 

 their existence at a remote period, and in another order of 

 things.* 



By the help of this living example, we are prepared to 

 investigate the question of the uses, to which all fossil Cham- 

 bered shells may have been subservient, and to show the 

 existence of design and order in the mechanism, whereby they 

 were appropriated to a peculiar and important function, in 



* A farther important light is thrown upon those species of fossil Multi- 

 locular shells, e. g. Orthoceratites, Baculites, Hamites, Scaphites, Belem- 

 nites, &c. (See PI. 44,) in which the last, or external chamber, seems to 

 have been too small to contain the entire body of the animals that formed 

 llieni, by Peron's discovery of the well-known chambered shell, the Spirula, 

 partially enclosed within the posterior extremity of the body of a Sepia (PI. 

 44, Fig's. 1, 2.1 Although some doubts have existed respecting the authen- 

 ticity of this specimen, in consequence of a discrepance between two draw- 

 ings professedly taken from it (the one published in the Encyclopedia 

 Methodique, the other in Peron's Voyage,) and from the loss of the speci- 

 men itself before any anatomical examination of it had been made, the sub- 

 sequent discovery by Captain King of the same shell, attached to a portion 

 of the mutilated body of some undescribed Cephalopod allied to the Sepia, 

 leaves little doubt of the fact that the Spirula was an internal shell, having 

 its dorsal margin only exposed, after the manner represented in both the 

 drawings from the specimen of Peron. (See PI. 44, Fig. ].) 



