280 BELEMNITBS. 



SECTION VII. 



Belemnite. 



We shall conclude our account of chambered shells witli 

 a brief notice of Belemnites. This extensive family occurs 

 only in a fossil state, and its range is included within that 

 series of rocks which in our section are called Secondary.* 

 These singular bodies are connected with the other families 

 of fossil chambered shells we have already considered ; but 

 differ from them in having their chambers enclosed within a 

 cone-shaped fibrous sheath, the form of which resembles the 

 point of an arrow, and has given origin to the name they 

 bear. 



M. de Blainville, in his valuable memoir on Belemnites, 

 (1827) has given a list of ninety-one authors, from Theo- 

 phrastus downwards, who have written on this subject. The 

 most intelligent among them agree in supposing these bodies 

 to have been formed by Cephalopods allied to the modern 

 Sepia. Voltz, Zieten» Raspail, and Count Munster, have 

 subsequently published important memoirs upon the same 

 subject. The principal English notices on Belemnites are 

 those of Miller, Geol. Trans. N. S. London, 1826, and that 

 of Sowerby, in his Min. Concha vol. vi. p. 169, et seq, 



A Belemnite was a compound internal shell, made up of 

 three essential parts, which are rarely found together in per- 

 fect preservation. 



First, a fibro-calcareous cone shaped shell, terminating at 

 its larger end in a hollow cone (PL 44, Fig. 17. and PL 44', 

 Fig. 7, 9, 10, 11, 12.t) 



* The lowest strata in wliich Belemnites are said to have been found is 

 the IMuschelkalk, and the highest the upper Chalk of Maestricht. 



■j- Tins part of the Belemnite is usually called the sheatJt, ox guard: it 



