170 SUPPLEMENTAEY NOTES. 



It would be irrelevant to dwell on the history of the successive attempts that have been 

 made to elucidate the origin and structure of the Belemnite. It will suffice to describe concisely 

 the present state of our knowledge as to the organization of the original, 



Mr. Miller, in 1823/ showed that the Belemnite was the rostrum or osselet of an animal 

 allied to the Sepia, or Cuttle-fish, and gave a restored outline of the supposed form of the 

 original, with the Belemnite in its presumed natural situation. Dr. Buckland and M. Agassiz 

 imagined that they had traced a natural connexion between certain species of Belemnites that 

 abound in the Lias, and the ink bag and other soft parts of the Sepise or Calamaries found 

 associated with them ; and they suggested the name of Belemno-sepia for the supposed animal of 

 the Belemnite,^ 



In 1842, the late Mr. Channing Pearce described, under the name of BelemnoteutUs antiquus, 

 a naked (destitute of a shell,) cephalopod, which occurs in immense numbers in certain beds 

 of the Oxford clay, especially at Christian Malford, in Wiltshire. This animal has at the 

 lower apical part a conical osselet of a horny substance, and fibrous structure, enclosing a 

 chambered siphunculated shell, which becomes gradually thinner at the upper part, and forms 

 a cup-like receptacle, in which is placed the ink-bag. The soft body of an elongated oval form, 

 with a pair of lateral paUeal fins, two large sessile eyes, and with eight uncinated arms and 

 a pair of long tentacula, are preserved in a more or less distinct and perfect state in several 

 specimens that have lately been discovered. Mr. Chaning Pearce, Mr. Cunnington, and other 

 collectors of these interesting remains, were convinced that this cephalopod was entirely distinct 

 from the animal to which the Belemnite belonged. 



In 1844, Professor Owen laid before the Eoyal Society "A description of certain Belemnites 

 preserved with a great proportion of their soft parts in the Oxford clay, at Christian Malford, 

 Wilts." ^ In this memoir (for which one'of the royal medals of the Society was awarded) the 

 author describes as the soft parts of the Belemnite the remains of the animal which Mr, Chaning 

 Pearce had two years previously shown to belong to a different genus (Belemnoteuthis). Belying 

 on the correctness of Professor Owen's views, I gave an abstract of this memoir in my "Medals 

 of Creation,^^ and stated that belemnites had been discovered with the osselet, receptacle, and ink- 

 bag, in their natural position, and with remains of the mantle, body, fins, eyes, and the tentacula, 

 with their horny rings and hooks.'* 



The discovery by my son (Mr. Reginald Neville Mantell) of some remarkably perfect specimens 

 of belemnites in the Oxford clay, exposed in the railway works on which he was engaged, near 

 Trowbridge, in WUts, led me to examine the structure of the Belemnoteuthis with more 

 attention than I had hitherto done, as well as the evidence adduced by Professor Owen in proof 

 that the fossil osselet, the Belemnite, belonged to the same genus of cephalopoda. I found that no 

 specimen had been obtained in which the phragmocone, or terminal chambered part of the Belemnoteuthis 

 (of Pearce), was situated in the aheohis of a Belemnite ; but Professor Owen having assumed that the 

 osselet of the former must have originally been protected by a rostrum, or guard, described 

 the soft parts as belonging to the animal of the Belemnite, conceiving that the phragmocone 

 of the Belemnoteuthis was that of a Belemnite that had slipped out of the guard. 



In a communication to the Boyal Society, in 1848, I demonstrated how utterly at variance 

 with the facts were these conclusions, and pointed out the essential distinctive characters that 

 separated the two extinct genera, so far as the specimens then discovered would warrant.^ Other 



' Geological Transactions, New Series, vol. ii. ; and Dr. Buckland'a Bridgewater Essay. 

 . ' BridgewaterEssay, p. 374. s pijiioe. Trans. Part I. 1844. p. 65. 



* Medals of Creation, vol. ii. p. 467. * Philoa. Trans. 1848, p. 171. 



