in the inferior Oolite, a variety of the sandstone rocks; the specimen
from which our illustration is taken being from the sandstone rocks of
Caen, so well known in this country from the great quantity employed in
our architectural ornaments. This example is remarkable for the
perfection of the spiral lines and the beautiful disposition of the ribs
or elevated portions, which serve to strengthen the delicate chambered
shell.
The _Ammonites cordatus_ of Sowerby (Fig. 2) is distinguished by a
spiral of a different order from that of _Eudesianus_. Its ribs forming
graceful waving lines, and terminating in a denticulated edge, give a
very symmetrical character to the architecture of this variety.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
The _Ammonites cristagalli_ (Fig. 3), in which we have an arrangement of
the convolutions not very unlike the last-named species, differs from it
in the disposition of those folds which form the supports of the arch of
the shell, by which a very charming though simple character is
obtained.
The _Ammonites muticus_ (Fig. 4), found in great abundance in the marls
of the Lias, is remarkable for the very curious arrangement of tubercles
or spines, which are formed by the elongation of the folds of the shell.
Notwithstanding the general defect which arises from the repetition of
angular lines, we have in this shell an example of the harmony which may
be produced by them when arranged upon a uniform system. The radiating
effect of these tubercles ranged around the involutions of the shell is
very pleasing.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.]
The _Ammonites Grenouilloxi_ (Fig. 5) offers another variety, which
shows the folds gradually being elevated, as these approach the mouth of
the shell, into bosses, by which, of course, increased strength is
secured where the shell becomes more open, and consequently weaker; at
the same time they give a pleasing variety to the form of the shell
itself.
The _Ammonites contrarius_ (Fig. 6) presents many distinguishing
characteristics, which are important to the naturalist as distinctive
markings, and furnish the artist with a variety of simple elegance which
deserves his study. The peculiar arrangement of the ribs, curving off
right and left from a line running along the centre of the shell, gives
rise to the formation of a series of festoon-like ribs, which add much
to the general beauty of this species.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.]
“The general principle,” remarks Dr. Buckland, “of dividing and
subdividing the ribs, in order to multiply supports as the vault
enlarges, is conducted nearly on the same plan, and for the same
purpose, as the divisions and subdivisions of the ribs beneath the
_groin work_ in the flat vaulted roofs of the florid Gothic
architecture.” In all these arrangements, and also in the bosses or
tubercles, we have varieties giving both additional strength and beauty.
A striking uniformity is found to prevail in even those shells of the
Ammonites which seem the most complicated; and the elegance of their
general appearance will be found to be due to the repetition, at regular
intervals, of one symmetrical system of forms. In many of these fossil
shells the pearly plates are dovetailed together in a curious and
beautiful manner, the regular disposition of the sutures producing a
very elegant foliated appearance. The charm of all these forms, and also
of those fossil shells which are allied to the Ammonites, consists in
the pleasing impression which is given by the gracefully curved outline,
and the waving lines by which the shells are banded.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.]
Among the Pectens--a class of shells common to the Sussex chalk--will
also be found a great number of forms which, although not unlike many
modern species, differ from them in some striking features, and which,
independently of their novelty, are so very elegant that they seem
peculiarly fitted for ornamental purposes. It has been with much
difficulty that we have chosen two or three illustrations from this
class, and we still feel doubtful if our selections exhibit the most
favourable samples of their symmetry.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.]
The _Pecten quinquccostatus_ of Forbes, the _Janira Atava_ of D’Orbigny
(Fig. 7), is a beautiful semicircular shell, with a regularly
denticulated edge, its surface being covered with fine transverse striæ.
The woodcuts of the _Pecten_ or _Janira striatacostata_ and the _Pecten
Dujardinii_ (Figs. 8 and 9), serve to exhibit other varieties of these
fossils, and at the same time to show the elegant curvatures of these
shells, when viewed in different positions.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.]
[Illustration: Fig. 10.]
[Illustration: Fig. 11.]
The _Trigonia carinata_ (Figs. 10 and 11), one of a class of fossils
which has particularly engaged the attention of Agassiz, is also found
in the Cretacean series. It is figured in two different positions, that
the elegant outline and the ornamental radiating striæ, regular
tubercles, and denticulated margin may be fully seen.
In the _Cardita_ we have the same heart-shaped form, but the ornamental
surface is in many respects different. The regular curved lines
proceeding from the hinge of the shell, which is itself most delicately
formed, present in the _Cardium mutonianum_ (Fig. 12), the _tuberculata_
of Sowerby, a most pleasing arrangement of striations. The regularity of
these, as shown in the woodcut, particularly recommends this specimen
and others of its class as admirably adapted for ornamental purposes,
where very delicate and elaborate workmanship can be admitted.
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
The _Opis Sabandiana_ (Fig. 13) is another of these elegant shells more
remarkable for the regular form of its outline than for any elaboration
of the striæ which traverse it, in this respect standing in pleasing
contrast with the preceding figure.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.]
Among the _Trigonia_ will be found a vast variety of the most
symmetrical forms, most of which are elegantly ornamented.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.]
The two representations which we have given of the _Trigonia scabra_
(Figs. 14 and 15) will convey a general idea of the more striking
characteristics of this class of fossils, which are found distributed
abundantly over the Portland rocks. The manner in which the folds of the
shells overlap each other is singular, and gives to them often a very
striking resemblance to the foldings of leaves in the leaf-bud of
plants. The curved lines, formed by the small bosses regularly elevated
from the striæ, running transversely to these lines in many species,
give an exceedingly pleasing outline, which certainly adapts these
Trigonia, from the variety of forms thus produced, to the purposes of
the art-manufacturer in a peculiar manner.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
By the wonderful transmutation of organic structures, by those natural
processes
“Which turned the ocean-bed to rock,
And changed its myriad living swarms
To the marble’s veined forms,”
we have preserved specimens of the early creations, rivalling in beauty
any of those which now exist.
If we can but show that a series of novelties for art may be found by
searching over the charnel-houses of the ancient world, possessing the
charm of symmetry and that beauty of arrangement and decoration which
adapts them, as we believe, to numerous ornamental purposes, we shall be
satisfied. We do but suggest an examination. We have confined ourselves
to a few of the numerous remains of animal life. “The sermons in stones”
are varied beyond the conception of those who have not attempted to read
them. Between the earliest attempts of Nature to form a cell in which
life should exert its mysteries, up to the most elaborated and gigantic
form which ever swam in the ancient waters or roamed in the wide
savannahs, there is one unceasing, never-failing effort to multiply the
beautiful, and to make it conformable to the useful. In conclusion, we
may again remark that whether we seek to copy from Nature her older or
her more recent works, we shall find in them all that peculiar charm
which
“Can so inform
The mind that is within us--so impress
With quietness and beauty--and so feed
With lofty thoughts,”
that the results of that study will be the production of beautiful
works, all tending, by their spells, to elevate humanity.
II.
In the previous chapter we confined ourselves to a selection of a few
fossil shells, with the hope of drawing the attention of the
art-manufacturer to a source whence he may gather, from thousands of
examples, forms of the utmost symmetry, which appear to fit themselves
in a peculiar manner for his especial purposes. The beauty of vegetable
forms has, through all time, won the attention of the artist. The lotus
and the acanthus are rendered classical by their numerous adaptations to
ornamental uses. The ivy and the laurel, the nepenthe and the
convolvulus, with numerous other plants and flowers, are to be found
moulded and painted on works of ornament and utensils for domestic use
through all ages.
Numerous and ever graceful as are the forms of the living vegetable
world--and these have been extensively copied--there is a vast field
within which diligent search will discover a great variety of plants,
which are no less beautiful and far less common than their living
analogues, in the bygone flora preserved so strangely in those strata
which mark the mutations of our mysterious world.
The flora of the Carboniferous period was of a most extraordinary
character, and luxuriant to an extent far exceeding even that which is
now exhibited in the forests of equatorial climes. Growing most rapidly
and of a lax tissue, these plants were of short duration, and were after
death rapidly converted into a mass of uniform structure, such as we
have now exhibited in every bed of fossil fuel. Three hundred species
of plants belong to the Coal formations of Great Britain alone; and it
is found that local causes, with which we are not acquainted, have
modified in a strange manner the plastic vegetation of this period; and
in what appear to be analogous positions we find whole genera and even
orders of plants of very opposite botanical character, presenting a
greater disparity of vegetation than countries the most remote in
geographical position.[B] Thus within a small area we have a variety of
strange forms, few of which do not adapt themselves for ornamental
purposes.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
Fig. 16 is the _Pecopteris lonchitica_ or _Mantelli_, a fern abundantly
found in the coal-beds of Newcastle-on-Tyne, which is indeed allied to
some of the existing ferns of New Zealand, but differing from them in
many of its markings. The graceful arrangement of the frond particularly
distinguishes this species.
Our next figure, the _Pecopteris orcopteridius_ (Fig. 17), is copied
from a specimen found in the coal shale of France, as is also Fig. 18,
the _Asplenites nodosus_, although this singularly and prettily marked
plant is frequently found in other coal districts. In the ferns of the
present period we have none which exactly resemble these varieties, and
they appear capable of being arranged by the artist into ornaments of an
exquisitely graceful character.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
Of these kinds numerous varieties exist in the fossil state, in which
the alternating arrangements of the fronds, and the systems of
venation, present many pleasing differences. These petrified plants,
which grew in the enormous deltas of our island and the Continent which
now form the known coal-fields, are often preserved with a delicacy
which we could scarcely have expected from the conditions of
putrefaction and rapid disintegration which must have gone on around
them. And not unfrequently we have singularly beautiful remains of the
dissected leaves of these plants (Fig. 19), this being effected
doubtless by the action of water on the softer portions of the leaf.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.]
The _Sphenopteris tridactylites_, which exhibits in the arrangement of
its fronds one of the most symmetrical forms to be found among this
elegant class of plants, can scarcely be sufficiently exhibited in the
space we are enabled to afford. It is abundant in the shales of the
mines of Montrelais. In the same district is also found the _Neuropteris
Heterophylla_ (Fig. 20), which is remarkable for the arrangement of its
fleshy leaves and the regularity of its venations. It must be remembered
that our drawing only represents one of the fronds. The grouping of the
whole on the straight and slender stem is very beautiful.
[Illustration: Fig. 20.]
The _Pecopteris Whitbiensis_ (Fig. 21), which presents many differences
from the other forms, is copied from a specimen found in a nodule of
argillaceous ironstone from the lower shale at Cloughton, and certainly
it presents many points of interest.
Among the most remarkable and characteristic plants of the coal
formation is the _Sigillaria_, of which extraordinary trailing plant
upwards of sixty species have been described.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.]
These plants are generally but a few feet in height, though sometimes
two yards broad.
Although of universal occurrence, it is singular that it is
unaccompanied by any evidence of branches, leaves, flowers, or fruit.
The peculiarly lax condition of this enormous tree fern has prevented
the preservation of many of the beautiful markings by which the trunk
must have been distinguished.
In our selection from such as have been discovered we have given two
striking varieties, the first the _Sigillaria elegans_ (Fig. 22), as it
is figured by Brongniart, and the _Sigillaria Defrancii_ (Fig. 23) from
St. Ambroise, both of them distinguished by the beauty of their
markings. It will be evident upon examination that these strange
vegetable wonders of an early world bear a relation to the recent
Coniferæ; but this subject, which is one of anxious dispute among fossil
botanists, need not detain us. Amid the many varieties of Sigillariæ and
Lepidodendrons which are associated with them numerous exquisitely
delicate markings occur. The sections of these plants too present, in
their medullary rays and slender vascular tissue, systems of arrangement
which are curious and ornamental.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.]
Having suggested--and we aim at nothing more--that the fossil flora
might furnish many tasteful ornaments to the art-manufacturer, we pass
hastily to an equally brief and merely
[Illustration: Fig. 23.]
suggestive notice if the immense variety of fossil forms allied to those
of the coral formations now progressing in the Pacific. The modern
corals present to us a great diversity of structure, but they are
excelled in all respects by those of the old world. The remains of these
labours of insect life are exceedingly numerous; entire mountains are
built, for the most part, with them; and the coral animals appear to
have been as busy in the ocean which washed the cliffs of the Silurian
boundary as it is at the present time on the reefs of Torres Straits and
over the Indian Seas. Figs. 24 and 25 represent the external appearance
and the interior arrangement of the _Calamopora polymorphus_ or
_Favosites_, which is found at Combe Martin, Ilfracombe, and Plymouth.
The arrangement of the tubes or cells, giving to the whole the
character of some of the vegetable productions of the tropics, is very
graceful.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.]
[Illustration: Fig. 25.]
[Illustration: Fig. 26.]
The _Pleurodictyum problematicum_ (Fig. 26), from the ironstone bands on
the banks of the Rhine, is singularly elegant. The disposition of the
denticulated channels presenting the appearance of a delicate bead-like
tracery, marking out a series of leaf-shaped divisions, gives great
beauty to this variety. In the figure copied the _Serpyllum_ curved in
the centre adds too, rather than detracts from, the beauty of the
fossil. Indeed, the manner in which Serpylla dispose themselves over
many of the corals is singularly graceful and capable of many
applications.
The following figures of the _Astræa geminata_ (Fig. 27) and the _Astræa
rotula_ (Fig. 28), showing their external character and the radiations
as exhibited in section, are only intended to display the novel and
elegant character which prevails through an almost infinite variety of
these coralline forms.
These beautiful creations are produced by animals of the polyp kind,
which, possessed of a power of separating the carbonate of lime from
sea-water, are constantly engaged in building up around themselves those
stone structures which, if not geometrical in all their arrangements,
are strikingly varied and beautiful. The coral animal has left traces of
its work on the earliest fossil rocks, but in the more recent or Oolitic
series the corals are most abundant.
[Illustration: Fig. 27.]
[Illustration: Fig. 28.]
It is almost impossible to select a specimen from any cabinet of the
corals of the Oolitic period without being struck with the regularity of
arrangement and the variety of beautiful forms produced. It is true that
our existing corals bear a strong resemblance to those of the seas of
the ancient world, but they differ in specific, and often in generic
character, and the fossil remains present forms and dispositions of
parts widely varied from those of the recent coral. It is curious and
interesting to observe, however, in both species, the same contrivances
adapted to provide that resistance to the waves so necessary for the
protection of the coral animal, and which especially marks its work.
The extent to which these coralline formations have gone on will be
indicated by the fact that the coralline crag at Oxford is exposed at
the surface, and the bottom of it has not been reached at the depth of
fifty feet. One of the limestone beds of the middle Oolite series of
England is a continuous bed of petrified corals, retaining the position
in which they grew at the bottom of the sea; and beside these we find
scattered through our Oolitic formations an immense quantity of coral
remains. Indeed, if we examine the stones of which some of our most
admired churches are built, as at Oxford and Cambridge, we shall find
that the firmly integrated mass is little else than shells and corals.
Thus the labours of hosts of insect architects, working in the ocean
which overflowed this island myriads of ages since, are now employed to
form those temples which religion consecrates to the Creator of all
things.
The elegance of these fossil remains is still further illustrated by
the three cuts of the _Pentacrinites subangularis_, the sections of the
_Pentacrinites dubius_, and of the _Encrinites moniliformis_ (Fig. 29).
[Illustration: Fig. 29.]
An examination of the numerous _Cystideæ_--the class of fossils which
are allied to the sea-urchins of our own seas--will convince any one of
the constant tendency towards the beautiful in all natural objects. The
arrangements of the plates of the Cystideans, ornamented as they are
with grooves, striæ, and pores, presenting a very highly ornamented
system of sculpture, cannot be excelled by any imaginary design. The
_Echino-encrinites_, with their curious plate ornaments and radiating
bands, are all in the highest degree symmetrical, as are also the
star-fishes found in a fossil state, and the numerous animal and
vegetable remains of a former world, to which we cannot do more than
thus cursorily allude. Many hundreds of similar creations possessing the
utmost variety in their arrangements, and rivalling in geometric
regularity and beauty the images of the kaleidoscope, are to be found
locked within the stony structure of our fossiliferous rocks.
The _Cidaris Blumenbachii_ (Fig. 30), found in the Jura, is the only
specimen of either of those classes of fossil forms which our space will
allow of our giving.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.]
The elegant form of the Lily Encrinites, as they have been called, is
well illustrated by the drawing of the _Encrinites moniliformis_ (Fig.
31), the sections of the stems of which have been already shown (Fig.
29), and the _Bourgueticrionis crinoidalis_ (Fig. 32), which at once
unites the perfection of lightness and elegance in the disposition of
its jointed stem and its crowning inflorescence. These curious links
between the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, presenting in their
singularly delicate structures the most desirable forms for ornamental
disposition, are to be found in great abundance and diversity.
Distributed through every phase of being, the creations of Nature
present a chain, each link of which is symmetrical in form and
beautiful in its arrangement. If we commence our examination with these
forms of the lowest organization, which appear to mark the dawn of
vitality on this planet, and trace series after series through the
distinguishing strata--each one marking a new epoch in the order of
animal existence, and exhibiting new and constantly varied forms--we
shall find that order and elegance mark the whole. Many of those strange
creations, the Trilobites--and indeed those monsters of that ocean which
appears to have prevailed over the dry land, the Saurians--do not
appear, upon the first inspection, to bear out this assertion; but an
examination of their wonderful armour will at once show that Nature, in
her works, never neglects to add to their adornment after she has
provided for the necessities of each condition.
[Illustration: Fig. 31.]
[Illustration: Fig. 32.]
The influence of the study of Nature in refining and purifying the human
mind has been often insisted on, and its truth is evident. No effort of
human thought, which is of a merely terrestrial character, can ever rise
to the truly beautiful. Whether the artist desires to paint upon his
canvas, to chisel out of marble, to mould in clay, or to cast in metal,
forms which shall possess the charm, the secret of inspiring a feeling
of the beautiful, he must go to Nature for his inspiration. Looking into
the mirror of her works, like the influence of gazing into loving eyes,
he draws from it a pure, a holy inspiration, which he may, if his
practised hand be obedient to his creative mind, transfer to the gross
element which is to express to mankind the power of the true.
Persuaded that but few of those who are engaged on works of art or of
art-manufacture have had their attention directed to any of the results
of palæontological studies, and feeling confident that an immense store
of novelties was to be found amongst the fossil remnants of those days
when man was not, the remarks now submitted for their consideration,
with every feeling of their imperfections and necessarily sketchy
character, will not, it is thought, be without interest.
While dealing with the applications of science to the economic purposes
of life, it was thought that a step beyond this mere utilitarian purpose
might be allowed, and that the studies of the natural philosopher might
be made to minister to the
“Spirit of Beauty, that does consecrate
With its own hues all that it shines upon
Of human thought or form.”
* * * * *
These essays were produced twenty-four years since. They were written to
serve a special purpose--the subject of art manufacture; being, in 1848,
one which was engaging general attention. With a few verbal corrections
the essays remain in the condition in which they were first published.
They indicate, however--and they aim at nothing more--with sufficient
clearness, a source from which the ingenious artist might multiply his
forms for ornamentation. It must not be forgotten that during the past
twenty-four years the science of geology has achieved wonders, and the
cabinets of the palæontologist have been crowded with the most beautiful
forms of organic creation. If _then_ there existed a store of choice and
rare forms, these are multiplied by thousands _now_.
THE END.
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