Page 70.
AMMONITE-MARBLE.
It is not unusual for the visitors at Whitby to inquire of the collectors how it is that the head of the animal is never found? and the crafty dealers, willing to accommodate the taste of their customers, carve the extremity of an Ammonite into the semblance of a serpent's head, and affix two red eyes; thus producing a veritable proof of the truth of the legend of St. Hilda! My young readers will not be duped by this trick-of-trade, if they reflect but a moment on the real nature of a fossil Ammonite: they will remember that it is a shell which, when empty, became filled with what was then soft mud, but is now stone; in like manner as if liquid plaster of Paris were poured into an empty snail-shell and consolidated.
In some parts of Somersetshire, a beautiful marble composed of an aggregation of two or three small species of Ammonites, is used for sideboards and other ornamental purposes: the polished slabs are diversified by the numerous sections of the shells.
Some of the clays of the Lias abound in a species of Ammonite of extraordinary beauty from the iridescent lustre of the pearly coat of the shell: a slab of stone from Watchett, on which a hundred or more Ammonites of this kind are displayed, may be seen in the British Museum.
[Note IV.] [Page 23.] Fossil Nautili.
The beauty, elegant form, and remarkable internal structure of the shell of the Nautilus, have rendered it in all ages an object of curiosity and admiration: yet an accurate knowledge of the organization of the animal to which it belongs, has but recently been obtained. The Nautili may be regarded as Cuttle-fish or Sepiæ, inhabiting shells furnished with an apparatus to impart buoyancy, and enable the animals to swim on the surface, or sink to the profound depths of the ocean. A few explanatory remarks on the nature of the recent Sepia may be necessary to render the subject intelligible to the unscientific reader.
RECENT NAUTILUS.