15 



of the Dorsetshire Coast, found a bag-shaped mass containing a 

 dark substance capable of being used as a pigment, and producing 

 the effect of sepia in a water-colour drawing, a speci- 

 men of which, or of a similar attempt, can yet be 

 seen in the Museum of the Geological Society of London, 

 thus perpetuating again what the Eoman Poet Persius 

 tells us of his countrymen, and of the ink from the Cuttle- 

 fish, then in use eighteen centuries ago. 



I give the quotation from Persius 1 in the words of 

 Brewster's 2 effective translation : — 



" At length his hooks he spreads, his pen he takes, 

 His papers here in learned order lays, 

 And there his parchment's smoother side displays ; 

 But oh, what crosses wait on studious men ! 

 The Cuttle's juice hangs clotted on our pen ; 

 In all my life such stuff I never knew, 

 So gummy thick — Dilute it, it will do, — 

 Nay, now 'tis water." 



Succeeding observers found more certain impressions 



of the body of the Belemnites then of the tentacle hooks, 



next of the aims, finally of the relative position of the 



various parts ; and so knowledge went on increasing, 3 



and better specimens came to light until a result was 



gained, such as we find set forth in the sketch (fig. 7), 



drawn from a fossil preserved in the British Museum, 



1 " Jam liber, et bicolor positis membrana capillis, 

 Inque manus chartae, nodosaque venit arundo. 

 Tunc queritur, crassus cahimo quod pendeat humor, 

 Nigra quod infusa vanescat Sepia lympha; 

 Dilutas queritur geminet quod fistula guttas." — Sat. III. v. 10. 

 s London, 1751. 



8 See an elaborate paper by Professor Owen, read before the Royal Society, March 

 21, 1844, on " Certain Belemnites preserved with a great proportion of their soft parts 

 in the Oxford Clay of Christian Malford, AVilts ;" the specimens can now be inspected 

 at the College of Surgeons. See also Monograph II., British Organic Remains, the 

 Belemnitidae, in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey. In this monograph by 

 Professor Huxley, published in 1864, a review is taken of the observations of pre- 

 vious observers, and many new facts introduced ; the paper contains figures and de- 

 scriptions of the new and very peculiar Lias form the Xiphoteuthis (PI. in.) in shape 

 like an elongated double-pointed Belemnite ; the originals are in the British Museum 

 and in Jermyn Street Museum. See also the Belemnitidne by Professor Phillips, now 

 in the course of publication by the Pahuontographical Society. 



FIG. 7. 



Belemnites 

 Bruguierianus 

 D'Orb. Lower 

 Lias. Char- 

 mouth. British 

 Mus. Reduced 

 l-7th. The ink- 

 hag is seen to- 

 wards the top 

 of the figure, 

 the tentacle 

 hooks still 

 higher. 



