1837.] 



Fossil Remains of the Cuttle Fish. 



405 



much less remarkable than the fossil condition of the ink-bags, and 

 leads to similar conclusion.* 9 



We learn from a recent German publication (Zeiten's Versteinerungen 

 Wiirtt^mbergs. Stuttgart, 1832, PI. 25 and PL 37), that similar remains 

 of pens and ink-bags are of frequent occurrence in the Lias shale of 

 Aalen and Boll.t Hence it is clear that the same causes which pro- 

 duced these effects during the deposition of the Lias at Lyme Regis, 

 produced similar and nearly contemporaneous effects, in that part of 

 Germany which presents such identity in the character and circum- 

 stances of these delicate organic remains. 



Paley has beautifully, and with his usual felicity, described the Uni- 

 ty and Universality of Providential care, as extending from the con- 

 struction of a ring of two hundred thousand miles diameter, to surround 

 the body of Saturn, and be suspended, like a magnificent arch, above the 

 heads of his inhabitants, to the concerting and providing an appro- 

 priate mechanism for the clasping and reclasping of the filaments in 

 the feather of the Humming-bird. The geologist descries a no less strik- 

 ing assemblage of curious provisions, and delicate mechanisms, extend- 

 ing from the entire circumference of the crust of our planet, to the mi- 

 nutest curl of the smallest fibre in each component lamina of the pen of 

 the fossil Loligo. He finds these pens uniformly associated with the 

 same peculiar defensive provision of an internal ink-bag, which is si- 

 milarly associated with the pen of the living Loligo in our actual seas ; 

 and hence he concludes, that such a union of contrivances, so nicely 

 adjusted to *he wants and weaknesses of the creatures in which they 

 occur, could never have resulted from the blindness of chance, but 

 could only have originated in the will and intention of the Creator. — 

 Bridgewater Treatises.— BucklanoV s Geology and Mineralogy. Vol. I. 

 p. 303-310. 



* We have elsewhere applied this line of argument to prove the sudden destruction 

 and burial of the Saurians, whose skeletons we find entire in the same Lias that 

 contains the pens and ink-bags of Loligo. On the other hand, we have proofs of 

 intervals between the depositions of the component strata of the Lias, in the fact, 

 that many beds of this formation have become the repository of Coprolites, dispersed 

 singly and irregularly at intervals far distant from one another, and at a distance from 

 any entire skeletons of the Saurians, from which they were derived ; and in the further 

 fact, that those surfaces only of the Coprolites, which lay uppermost at the bottom of the 

 sea, have often suffered partial destruction from the action of water before, they were 

 covered and protected by the muddy sediment that has afterwards permanently envelop- 

 ed them. Further proof of the duration of time, during the intervals of the deposition of 

 the Lias, is formed in the innumerable multitudes of the shells of various Mollusks and 

 Conchifers which had time to arrive at maturity, at the bottom of the sea, during 

 the quiescent periods which intervened between the muddy invasions that destroyed, 

 and buried suddenly the creatures inhabiting the waters, at the time and place of their 

 arrival. 



* As far as we can judge from the delineations and lines of structure in Zeiten's plate, our 

 species from Lyme Regis is the same with that which he has designated by the name of 

 Loligo Aalensis ; but I have yet seen no structure in English specimens like that of his 

 Loligo Bollensis. 



