Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/237

 Rh in these ink-bags, for they contain the fluid which the living sepia emits in the moment of alarm; and might detail further evidence of their immediate burial, in the retention of the forms of these distended membranes (Pl. 29. Figs. 3—10.) since they would speedily have decayed, and have spilt their ink, had they been exposed but a few hours to decomposition in the water The animals must therefore have died suddenly, and been quickly buried in the sediment that formed the strata, in which their petrified ink and ink-bags are thus preserved. The preservation also of so fragile a substance as the pen of a Loligo, retaining traces even of its minutest fibres of growth, is not much less remarkable than the fossil condition of the ink-bags, and leads to similar conclusions.

We learn from a recent Germari publication (Zeiten's Versteinerungen Württembergs. Stuttgart, 1832, Pl. 25 and Pl. 37,) that similar remains of pens and, ink-bags are of frequent occurrence in the Lias shale of Aalen and Boll.