304 FOSSIL INK-BAGS. 
ancient world, (remains which have been buried 
for countless centuries in the deep foundations 
of the earth.) traces of so delicate a fluid as the 
ink which was contained within the bodies of 
extinct species of Cephalopods, that perished 
at periods so incalculably remote ; yet the 
preservation of this substance is established 
beyond the possibility of doubt, by the recent 
discovery of numerous specimens in the Lias of 
Lyme Regis,* in which the ink-bags are 'pre- 
served in a fossil state, still distended, as when 
they formed parts of the organization of living 
bodies, and retaining the same juxta-position to 
a horny pen, which the ink-bag of the existing 
Loligo bears to the pen within the body of that 
animal. (PI. 28, Fig. I.) 
Having before us the fact of the preservation 
of this fossil ink, we find a ready explanation of 
it, in the indestructible nature of the carbon of 
which it was chiefly composed. Cuvier describes 
the ink of the recent Cuttle Fish, as being a dense 
fluid of the consistence of pap, *'bouillie," sus- 
pended in the cells of a thin net- work that 
pervades the interior of the ink-bag; it very 
much resembles common printers' ink. A sub- 
stance of this nature would readily be trans- 
* We owe this discovery to the industry and skill of Miss 
Mary Anning, to whom the scientific world is largely indebted, 
for having brought to light so many interesting remains of fossil 
Reptiles from the Lias at Lyme Regis. 
