43 
Kent, were several pencils ; and among them one, which, when cleared 
of the chalk, and carefully examined with a lens, I could plainly per- 
ceive was not only not a belemnite, but a complete pallisadoe- spine, 
possessing a perfect circular articulating cavity, and a grained surface, 
somewhat resembling the manufactured surface of seal-skin. Like most 
of the recent spines of this genus, it is of a triquetral form, at the end 
which is attached to the shell : but, unlike all those figured by Klein, 
it not only soon becomes larger and rounded, but terminates in a 
rounded cone. Its colour, at its articulating end, is of a very light 
fawn colour, which shades oft to nearly white, at about one third of 
the length of the spine, the remaining part being again of a fawn 
colour, but much darker than that in the other part of the spine. 
As a collector, I highly estimated a fossil, which I had not hitherto 
known to exist, and consequently treasured it with some care. But 
comparison with some specimens of the Folkstone belemnites, which 
possess somewhat of a similar form with that of this fossil, and at the 
same time the transparency of the Prussian fossils, which, although 
generally regarded as belemnites, had been suspected by Klein to be 
echinital spines, induced me to suspect a similarity of substance in both 
fossils. To determine this, I broke the fossil spine in two, and was 
astonished to find its substance exactly agreeing with that which is 
i. . . „ .a dark broAvn spar, with striae ra- 
ia mg from the centre, and intersected by concentric circles. 
. av ^ n S thus got rid of this erroneously assumed mark of distinc- 
tion, the brown radiating spar, and ascertained that a body, indis- 
putably an echinital spine, had, by its mineralization, been rendered 
similar in its substance to belemnites ; and having thereby established 
the position of Klein, that every body possessing a similar structure 
with the belemnite is not therefore to be considered as one of those 
fossils, we are absolutely left without any distinctive character, by 
which, in many instances, these fossils can be separated. It is true, 
that we sometimes have, on the one hand, as in the specimen just 
