Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/235

 Rh beyond the possibility of doubt, by the recent discovery of numerous specimens in the Lias of Lyme Regis, in which the ink-bags are preserved 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. (Pl. 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," suspended in the cells of a thin net-work that pervades the interior of the ink-bag; it very much resembles common printers' ink. A substance of this nature would readily be transferred to a fossil state, without much diminution of its bulk.

Pl. 28, Fig. 5, represents an ink-bag of a recent Cuttle Fish, in which the ink is preserved in a dessicated state, being not much diminished from its original volume. Its form is similar to that of many fossil ink-bags (Pl. 29, Figs. 3—10,) and the indurated ink within it differs only from the