C\ 



CEPHALOPODA. 17 



the dibranchiatc Cephalopods, two species of Argonaut have been found in the newer 

 tertiary formations on the Continent ; and two genera belonging to the family 

 Belemnitida occur in the beds of the Paris basin, and in the Eocene formations of 

 England. The remains of one of these last are very closely allied to the recent Sepia, 

 and have been generally referred to that genus. M. Voltz, in his ' Observations sur 

 les Belcmnites,' pointed out certain differences which induced him to propose a new 

 genus, named by him "Belosepia," for their reception. The French Palaeontologists 

 reject this genus as having been proposed on insufficient grounds ; but, for the reasons 

 stated in a subsequent part, it ought, as it appears to me, to be retained. The other 

 remains found in the Paris basin, connect Belosepia with Bclemnite ; and the genus 

 Bclojitera has been established by M. Deshayes for their reception. Both these 

 genera occur in the London clay and in the Bracklesham sands ; and they, together 

 with certain remains found in the neighbourhood of London, and described by Mr. 

 James Sowerby in the Mineral Conchology as Belojjfera anomala, and for the reception 

 of which I have proposed the new genus Belcnuiosis, are the only remains of dibran- 

 chiate Cephalopods which as yet have been found in the tertiary formations of England. 



That these animals fulfilled in the ancient seas the office of repressing animal life 

 cannot be doubted. The living Cephalopods are voracious in the extreme ; and, as 

 we find that throughout the transition and secondary groups the number of the 

 zoophagous Trachelipods is small in comparison with that of the phytophagous Mollusca, 

 it is not unreasonable to seek in the Cephalopods for that check upon an excessive 

 increase of submarine life, which the other zoophagous molluscs were too inconsiderable 

 in number to afford.* 



There is scarcely any class in the animal kingdom of the anatomy and habits of 

 which zoologists have so long remained ignorant, or of which the systematic arrange- 

 ments proposed have been so conflicting as the class Cephalopoda. Composed, as it 

 is, of animals in their external construction and appearance remote from all others, 

 and widely differing among themselves, we need not feel surprised at the confusion 

 which characterises the older systems, based, as they all were, more or less, on artificial 

 characters, derived from the various conditions of the shell, or from modifications of 

 the dermal system ; and the confusion was increased by the introduction among 

 the Cephalopods of numerous microscopic chambered shells, to which M. d'Orbigny 

 gave the name Foraminifera, but which the recent investigations of Dujardin 

 show to have been constructed by an inferior class of animals, belonging or allied to 



the Zoophyta, and which he has named B/iizojjoda. It would be foreign to the purpose 

 to enter here into any history or comparison of the different systems of arrangement 

 which have been proposed. In the eleventh volume of Lamarck's ' Histoire Naturelle 

 des animaux sans vertebres,' edited by MM. Deshayes and Milne Edwards the reader 



* See Dr. BucklancTs Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i, chap. xv. 



