Here we meet for the first time with the ammonite. We will introduce him first in his fictitious, and then in his real character, and this we do to show how science dispels the follies of ignorance and superstition. The ammonites were once supposed to be petrified snakes—indeed they are even now called by the ignorant, “snake-stones;” and the pleasant little legend about these snake-stones was this, that St. Hilda, who once resided near Whitby, was very much annoyed, as any matron would be, especially if she kept an establishment for young ladies, as St. Hilda is alleged to have done, by the multitude of snakes that infested the place, and disturbed her equanimity. Accordingly, she set to work, and having first prayed their heads off, then prayed the snakes into stone. In Scott’s “Marmion” the legend reads thus:—
“And how the nuns of Whitby told
How of countless 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.”—Canto 2.
Richardson, in his Geology, relates the “instance of a dealer who having been requested by his customers to supply them with some of the creatures which had escaped decapitation, contrived to manufacture some heads of plaster of Paris, and affixed them to the specimens; thus he pursued a thriving trade, until some remorseless geologist visiting the place, not only beheaded the reptiles, but showed that they were in reality fossil shells.” With the figure of the ammonite every reader of geological books is familiar; it is, perhaps, the best known and most beautiful of all our fossils. We give below a representation of four different kinds, found in the lias and oolite.
1. AH. BECHEI. LIAS