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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 perislied 
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. 1 .) 
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 Aiming, 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. 
