﻿HISTORICAL NOTICES. 



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mentions, but with no critical attention, Belemnites corresponding to the great types 

 already familiar to the English collectors. Fusiform. Belcmnites (" Belemnites ari 

 pistillum rcferens") of Lhwyd, with a ventral canal, are mentioned in Upper Lias Clay at 

 Marston Trussel and Oxendon, and in Stone at Crick. It is easy to recognise 

 B. elongatiis of Lias, and B. sulcatus of Oxford Clay, among the contents of Morton's 

 drawers, and it is evident that he looked curiously and carefully at those objects ; but 

 he gives no figures, a somewhat remarkable exception to his general practice, which is to 

 present a great number of very tolerable illustrations of invcrtebral fossils. 



IFoodirard. — Belemnites were much studied by Dr. John Woodward, not merely 

 as to the true nature of these fossils, in which he was signally wrong, but as to the 

 diversity of their forms, and the variety of accidental circumstances by which they arc accom- 

 panied. In his 'Method of Eossils' (172S) he speaks of "the Belemnites fusiformis" of 

 J. Bauhin, another of a different form pointed at each end, and of a " conic" Belemnite. In 

 the ' Natural History of Eossils ' (1729) he gives several particulars and a good deal of general 

 information about the conic, fusiform, and bicuspid Belemnites, the two former having one 

 'chap or seam' running down one side, the latter no such seam. In this his latest notice 

 of Belemnites we find him at last willing to correct his former notions, and to admit that 

 they might be of " animal, and not of mineral nature, as he had ever taken them to be" 

 (p. 104). The species of Belemnites thus defined may be in some degree ascertained by 

 the reference to localities. Thus, the bicuspid sorts, being quoted from the chalk-pits of 

 Northfleet, Greenhithe, and Croydon, are easily recognised as the incomplete fossils called 

 Actinocamax by Miller, now included in the genus Belemnitella. The fusiform Belemnites 

 include the well-known "Stunsfield" species (also quoted from Hannington, in Wiltshire), and 

 one of similar general shape but different in construction from "Spitten," in Yorkshire, where 

 there are " great numbers of them in blue clay in a large cliff." x\nother locality given is 

 a tile-clay-pit, near Thurnham, three miles from Maidstone, in Kent ; this was a species 

 of the Gault, probably that now called B. minimus. One other locality is given for 

 a fusiform Belemnite, viz., a quarry half a mile west of Clipston, Northamptonshire ; it 

 probably refers to a species in the Marlstone, such as B. clavatus, Blainville. 



In his group of conic Belemnites Woodward placed the larger portion of the specimens 

 which had come under his notice. Most of them had the " chap or seam running length- 

 ways of the surface," which we find in many Oolitic Belemnites, or else the narrow canal 

 which belongs to the Cretaceous Belemnitellse. 



Belonging to this latter group were specimens from Greenhithe and Northfleet, in 

 Kent, which the author suspected to be of the same kinds as the bicuspid sorts already- 

 noticed 1 . The large Belemnites abhreviatus of the Coralline Oolite was received by 

 Woodward from Cowley Common, near Oxford, with vermiculi (Serpulse) and small oysters 

 adherent. An allied species occurred at Stowell, in Gloucestershire, in the Oolitic zone of 



1 At present we should refer those incomplete "bicuspid" to these more perfect "conic" examples. 



