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VI. A Description of certain Belemnites, preserved, with a great proportion of their 
soft parts, in the Oxford Clay, at Christian-Malford, Wilts. By Richard Owen, 
Esq., F.R.S., 85c. 
Received March 14, — Read March 21, 1844. 
The extinct Cephalopod, called Belemnite, has long been known by its peculiarly 
complex shell, which includes a part possessing the chambered and siphonated struc- 
ture characteristic of the entire shell of the Spirula and Nautilus, and the fossil 
Orthoceratites, Baculites, Ammonites, &c. Like the latter unequivocal congeners of 
the still existing Nautilus, the Belemnites are distributed through avast series of the 
secondary rocks from the epoch of the muschelkalk, when they seem first to have 
been introduced into the old ocean of this planet, up to the Maestricht chalk, when 
they finally perished. 
No fossil shell has more exercised the ingenuity and research of the interpreters of 
ancient Nature, or has given rise to so many conflicting opinions as to the affinities 
of its animal constructor, than the Belemnite : but the specimens from the Oxford 
clay near Christian-Malford, in Wiltshire, liberally presented by the Marquis of North- 
ampton, P.R.S., Samuel Peace Pratt, Esq., F.R.S., and William John Broderip, Esq., 
F.R.S., to the Royal College of Surgeons, leave no reasonable ground for further 
hesitation or scepticism on the subject, since they display in a truly marvellous manner, 
those soft and seemingly most perishable parts of the animal which are essential to 
convey a true idea of its living form. 
It must, however, be premised in vindication of the fruitful principle of physiolo- 
gical correlations, established by Cuvier as the key to the interpretation of fossil 
remains, that, for some years prior to this discovery, there had been obtained suffi- 
cient evidence of the organization of the Belemnite, to determine both its ordinal 
and family affinities ; but, as the value of this evidence failed to be appreciated by 
some experienced palaeontologists, from want of sufficient knowledge of, or faith in, 
the laws of the interdependencies of the characteristic parts of the Cephalopodal 
organization, the additional facts afforded by the well-preserved specimens from the 
Oxford clay are most acceptable and valuable. 
In the compound shell of these specimens the following parts are recogni- 
zable : — 
1 st. lhe terminal spathose body called the ‘guard,' sheath or rostrum*, resembling 
the head of a dart or javelin, whence the name Belemnite originally given to this part 
* Plate II. fig. 1 , a . 
MDCCCXLIV. K 
