[G] [Note III.] Whitby Ammonites.
Thus Whitby's nuns exulting told—
How that of thousand snakes, each one
Was changed into a coil of stone,
When holy Hilda prayed:
Themselves, within their sacred bound,
Their stony folds had often found.
Scott's Marmion.
Lign. 8:—Nautilus from the Chalk, near Lewes, (one-eighth the natural size.)
The Nautili were the contemporaries of the Ammonites, and many kinds are found associated with those shells, in strata far more ancient than the Chalk; and several species of both genera, as we have previously shown, were inhabitants of the cretaceous ocean. When the Ammonites became extinct, the Nautili continued to flourish, and numerous examples occur in the strata that were deposited during the vast period which intervened between the close of the Chalk formation, and the dawn of the existing condition of the earth's surface. At the present time two or three kinds only are known in a living state, and these are restricted to the seas of tropical climes, and so seldom approach the shores, that but few specimens of the animals that inhabit the shells have been obtained.
The Nautilus, therefore, is one of those types of animal organization that have survived all the physical revolutions to which the surface of the earth was subjected during the innumerable ages that preceded the creation of the human race.[H] This remarkable fact is portrayed with much force and beauty by Mrs. Howitt, in the following stanzas:
[H] [Note IV.] Fossil Nautili.