lis 



BRITISH BELEMNITES. 



Chippenham had yielded its treasures, and Belemnites of the same general aspect, with 

 considerable portions of the phragmocone, and even extensions of the conotheca, had 

 furnished to Prof. Owen the materials for a valuable essay on the structure of the 

 shell and the relations of the animal (' Phil. Trans.,' 1841). The fossil was named by 

 Mr. Pratt B. Owenii. 



The same great record of science contains, in the volume for 1848, another "Essay 

 on the Belemnites of Chippenham," by Dr. Mantell, in which the figures represent a 

 variety of important facts previously unobserved. The Belemnite which he examined 

 is here called B. attenuatus — a name long before appropriated to a species found 

 in the Gault, which had, however, been referred to a new genus, Belemmtella. 

 D'Orbigny makes known to us a very similar form of Belemnite, also from the 

 Oxford Clay, to which he gives the name of B. Puzosimms. Finally, Mr. Morris, in his 

 excellent 'Catalogue of British Eossils,' 1854, employs the term B. Oioenii, giving 

 B. Puzosianus as a synonym, and under B. tornatilis proposes the question if it be not 

 identical with B. Owenii. 



The natural group thus noticed consists of Belemnitic guards of more than the usual 

 length, with a generally cylindrical aspect, more or less compressed; always marked by 

 a depression, often by a conspicuous groove, from the apex along the ventral surface 

 for a third or half the length of the axis. 



To the forms best known nmst be added one or two more from the midland district 

 of England, and as many from the Oolitic series of the coast of Cromarty. These are 

 inordinately long, but in other respects correspond in general character with the more 

 usual species. 



Looking back upon earlier groups of Belemnites, we find nothing so much like these 

 as the long, somewhat compressed forms alhed to B. tripartitiis (see PI. XI, fig. 28), 

 in the Upper Lias. But all those Liassic forms have lateral grooves near the apex, often 

 very conspicuous ; these of later ages, in the Oxonian strata, never. 



In regard to the synonymy, there can be little doubt about preservhig Mr. Pratt's 

 name, B. Owenii, for the whole group ; B. Puzosianus, D'Orbigny, having certainly to be 

 associated with it, as a variety. 



Belemnites Owenii, Pratt. Pis. XXXI, XXXII, figs. 76—81. 



Reference. Beiemnites {unnamed), Smith, ' Strata Identified,' 1816, and 'Strati- 

 graphical System,' p. 55, 1817. 

 B. tornatilis, Phillips, ' Geol. of Yorkshire,' vol. i, ed. 2, 1835 (no 

 figure). 



B. Owenii, Pratt, 'Phil Trans.,' 1844. 



B. attenuatus, Mantell, 'Phil. Trans.,' 1848. 



