46 Mr. J. S. Miller on Belemnites. 



total ignorance of geology^ have existed in a very remarkable degree in regard 

 to Belemnites. These fossils appear to have been among the earliest noticed, 

 and although in the various conjectures which have been formed respecting 

 them we may trace a gradual progress towards the truths their real nature has 

 not as yet been developed. It could in fact be only by the use of those guides 

 which the present state of knowledge of natural history has afforded^ that we 

 could successfully arrive at a solution of the question. 



The ancients observed these fossils; and in Ovid's Metamorphoses it is stated 

 that the urine of the Indian lynx became converted into stone before it reached 

 the ground^ and thus formed the Belemnites^ which were therefore named 

 Lapides Lyncis, Lyncurium, &c. Another denomination was Idteus Dacty- 

 luSj probably from their having been found on Mount Ida, and from their re- 

 semblance in form to fingers, or perhaps from their having been first noticed 

 by those celebrated metallurgists of antiquity, who obtained that title from 

 their being ten in number. 



It was for a long time a common belief that these stones were petrified 

 fingers ; and this opinion was entertained by the Northern nations, whose 

 gloomy forests fostered a natural tendency to the mysterious, and who em- 

 beUished the nomenclature of natural history with many terms referring to 

 supernatural agency : hence the common names of this fossil in the North, 

 Devil's Fingers, Spectrorum Candela, &c. 



In later times the Belemnite was supposed to be produced by electricity, and 

 was called Lapis fulminans, and Thunderbolt. 



In the latter part of the I7th century all figured stones (as fossils were then 

 caHed) were by many writers considered to have no relation to the organic 

 bodies they resembled, but to be only lusus naturce, concretions which had 

 accidentally obtained those forms; and although some persons adopted a 

 sounder opinion in regard to the common fossil shells, yet they supposed the 

 Belemnite to be truly mineral, and either a stalactite or a crystal. 



Others finding fragments of Belemnites in the sandy country of Prussia, 

 where amber is also found, imagined them to be that substance in a petrified 

 state. 



When more accurate notions respecting fossils were adopted, and the Be- 

 lemnite was observed to occur always in association with marine productions 

 (such as shells and the bones of Saurian animals), it was supposed, on account 

 of the conical cavity at its broader end, to be a tooth of some unknown animal, 

 or a spine, like those of Echini. Other ideas, which appear to have been 

 merely conjectural, existed, that they might have been Alcyonia, or even Ho- 

 lothuriae. 



