GEOLOGY OF FOLKESTONE — THE GAUI/I'. 
355 
vni-ions Ooovs of n lionsc wlioii (lu^ fi'ont -u-all 1ms boon ooni])loioly 
pulled iiway. 
No one can look at ilic pearly nautilus sliell — the animal itself is 
\cry rarely to bo seen, even in a preserved state — and the common 
native cuttle-fish of our shore, without noting at once a marked dif- 
ference in the characters apparently presented to his view. A com- 
parison of the animals, however, shows equally plainly that they are 
truly members of the same natural groiip. So it is not to be won- 
dered at that the early geological investigators should have failed for 
a long time to have recognized the very various objects now known 
to have been vai'ious solid parts of differently modified cuttle-fish as 
referable to the class of Cephelopoda. Who, at first sight, without 
previous training, would have imagined the dart-like sparry Belem- 
nite and the g-littering' nacreous Ammonite to be the remains of ani- 
mals belonging to this one group ? 
The position of the ammonite in the animal kingdom was the more 
easily made out from its general resemblance to the nautilus, whose 
pearly shell is a familiar ornament in our rooms ; but the translucent 
spathose Belemnite sorely puzzled the early natm^alists. It was 
amongst the earliest recorded fossils, and some singular notions were 
entertained of its origin, and some equally singular medicinal proper- 
ties were also assigned to it. Whether or not bclemnites arc the 
ol)jccts refeiTcd to as the Lyncurium by Theophrastes, or the 
Dactylus idceus by Pliny, they are certainly noticed by Agricola 
in 1546. 
It is curious to trace the first strange guesses made as to what 
these objects were, und then to see how slowly, how very slowly, 
their true nature was made out. Some took them for the tails of 
crabs, the vertebra of snakes, the teeth of whales, &c., and they 
were alternately referred to every class of animals from the mammal 
to the polype ; sometimes even they were put with marine algals, 
and lastly they were thought to be " thunder-stones." 
George Agricola, to whom we have already referred, knew the 
entire Belemnite with its alveolus, and was the first author who used 
the generic term. Conrad Gesner, in 1565, follows with the first 
figures of these fossils, and in 1596 we find Celespin occupjnng him- 
self in attempting to make out their origin, and regarding the 
