394 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



coral; Brander (1754), as species of Argonauts, allied to Orthoceras, 

 the young being without cavities, the adults having alveoli. Allioni 

 (1757) says " Targionio Toggeto speaks in his voyages of having 

 seen a living Belemnite attached to red coral in the cabinet of Yin- 

 cent Capponi ;" but travellers, we know, teU strange tales, and they 

 have told marvellous ones in respect to the cuttle-fish. Denys 

 Montfort represented a "kraken octopod" scutling a "three-masted" 

 ship ; and is said to have told Defrance that if this were "swallowed," 

 he would in his next edition represent the monster embracing the 

 Straits of Gibraltar, or capsizing a squadron. 



From Wallerius, Jean Gesner, Torrubia, Cartheuser (1755), 

 D'Argenville, Walch, Yiallet (1761), Bertrand (1763), we get no new 

 notions ; while we are favoured with the following from Le Monnier 

 — of their being polypes, composed of osseous articulations, living in 

 the end of the shell ; from Titius of their being the claws or nails of 

 cartilaginous star-fish, by means of which they crawled along in 

 the sea. 



Joshua Piatt, in 1764, however, makes another step. Agreeing 

 with Ehrhart generally, he confirms his idea of the mode of growth 

 by supposing it to have been accomplished by the two lobes of the 

 mantle of the animal, after the manner of the shells of the Porcel- 

 laines. 



Again passing over in the long list of authors the names of Rosinus 

 (1767), Andrsea, Duluc (1765), Tressau, Firmin (1767, who pretends 

 to have found a living analogue, but really only a mutilated calmar), 

 Pallas (in the "Magasin de Stralsund), Walch (1775, in Knorr's 

 great work on fossils), Guettard (1783, by whom considered as a 

 straight nautilus), we come to the nineteenth century, when another 

 step was made towards more correct knowledge by the investigations 

 which then began for the purpose of ascertaing the ]30sition of the 

 Belemnite in the body of the animal. M. de Blainville figm^es most 

 conspicuously in the list of authors of this period, amongst which 

 may be mentioned Sage, Deluc, Denys de Montfort (1808), Defi-ance 

 (who had the happy idea of separating the species of Belemnites into 

 those anterior to the Chalk Period, and those belonging to it) ; Beu- 

 dant, who showed the limitation of the range of rocks in which they 

 occurred ; Faure Biquet, who distinguished several species ; Cuvier 



