Prof. Buck LAND on Coprolites. 227 



1 now proceed to compare with the Sauro-coprolites of Lyme Regis some 

 similar substances which have lonj^ been known to exist at Westbury, Aust 

 Passag-e, and Watchet, on the banks of the Severn, and which now also prove 

 to be fascal balls of digested bone : they mostly occur in a thin bed of sandy 

 micaceous lias, so full of the bones and teeth and spines of reptiles and fishes, 

 as to form a bony breccia known to geologists by the name of the bone-bed, 

 and occupying the lowest place at the bottom of the lias formation. The 

 bones are chiefly of unknown small reptiles, but those of Ichthyosaurus and 

 Plesiosaurus also occur; they are for the most part broken, though not much 

 rolled, and both bones and teeth are separated from the part to which in life 

 they belonged. Mr. Conybeare and myself have described these Coprolites as 

 irregular bodies of various form, usually cylindrical, ^vilh rounded ends, some 

 having; a black and glossy surface and fracture, others being of a dull brown 

 colour; and have conjectured them to be rolled palates, or rolled fragments of 

 very solid bone : at that time no one suspected tliat they were bone reduced 

 to the state offices*. More recently, Mr. Dillwyn has applied to them the 

 name of nigrum graecum, from their resemblance in form to the album grffi- 

 cum of the cave of Kirkdale. 



Mr. J.S.Miller of Bristol possessesan extensive collection of these bodies, and 

 has also for some time suspected them to be fEecal. He has kindly lent me those 

 which I have engraved at Plate XXX. figs. 13. 14. 16: a few only of these 

 Coprolites from the Severn district resemble those of the lias at Lyme Regis; 

 most of them are much smaller, and differ in the absence of spiral structure, 

 and the rare occurrence of scales or bones in them. Externally they are of a 

 bright glossy black, internally of a dark brown colour; their substance is 

 compact, their fracture splintery, and sometimes conchoidal ; their surface 

 often smooth as if they had been polished f. They vary in size from that of 



No. 7. p. 153., that the most valuable bait at the Newfotindland fisheries is the Loligo vulgaris; 

 with this animal nearly one half of all the codfish there taken is caught. The Loligo appears there 

 in throngs about the beginning of August, and it begins to retire from the coast in September. 

 Cuttle-fish are also used as a favourite bait by fishermen on our own coasts. Mr. Clift informs 

 me that he recollects having seen a large shark dissected near Poole, in the stomach of which was 

 found nothing but a mass of beaks of Sepias. He also informs me that ambergris is often much 

 contaminated by an admixture of the beaks of Sepia3. Since, then, our modern whales and sharks 

 and larger fishes are so voracious of modern Cephalopodes, it is probable tliat the Cephalopodcs 

 of the ancient seas were an equally favourite food to their contemporary Saurians : the discovery 

 of the beak of a Sepia within a Coprolite would decide this question in the affirmative. 



* Geol. Trans. Second Series, vol. i. p. 302, and Plate XXXVII. 



t It is probable their smoothness and form are entirely due to the action of the intestines in 

 which they were moulded ; but, as the bones and teeth that are found with them have the same 

 black colour and glossy surface, these common characters may have resulted from agents to which 



2 G 2 



