394 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
coral; Brandcr (1754), as species of Argonauts, allied to Orthoceras, 
the young being without ca\nties, the adults having alveoli. Allioni 
(1757) says " Targionio Toggeto speaks in his voyages of having 
seen a living Belcmnite attached to red coral in the cabinet of Vin- 
cent Capponi ;" but travellers, we know, tell 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, Viallet (1761), Bertrand (1763), we get no new 
notions ; while we arc 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 gro^vth 
by supposing it to liave 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), Andraja, 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 pm-pose of ascertaing the positimi of the 
Belemnite in the body of the animal. M. de Blainville figures most 
conspicuously in the list of authors of this period, amongst which 
may be mentioned Sage, Deluc, Denys de Montfort (1808), Defrance 
(who had the happy idea of separating the species of Beleninites 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 
