_To the Right Honourable the_ EARL _of_ MACCLESFIELD, President _of
the_ Royal Society.
[Read Nov. 23, 1758.]
My Lord,
I now return the marine animal your Lordship did me the honour to
recommend to my examination; which I find to be a species of one kind
of the Sea Polypi, mentioned by naturalists; but I think not very
accurately described.
The kinds of Sea Polypi are understood to be,
_First_, The Polypus, particularly so called, the Octopus, Preke, or
Pour-contrel: to which kind our subject belongs.
_Secondly_, The Sepia, or Cuttle-fish.
_Thirdly_, The Loligo, or Calamary. And each of these has its different
species and varieties[159]. The ancients add the Nautilus; and some
sorts of Star-fish might perhaps be not improperly ranged among them.
All of the first kind have eight arms, placed at equal distances round
the head; below the arms are two eyes, and the body is short and thick.
The Cuttle-fish, and the Calamary, have each of them ten arms; of which
eight are shorter ones, tapering gradually to a point from the head,
where they all rise, to their extremities: the other two (frequently
called Tentacula) are three or four times as long, perfectly round,
slender, and of an equal thickness for above two thirds of their whole
length; then spreading into a form nearly like that of the shorter
arms. Great numbers of _acetabula_, or suckers, are placed somewhat
irregularly on each of the shorter arms, and on the spreading parts of
the Tentacula, where some of the suckers are a great deal larger than
the rest.
The body of the Cuttle-fish is broad and flat, having within it a broad
friable white bone; that of the Calamary is a sort of cartilaginous
case holding the intestines, of a roundish oblong shape, furnished with
two fins, and having within it a thin transparent elastic substance
like Isinglass.
[Illustration: _Philos. Trans. Vol. L._ TAB. XXIX. _p. 779_
_G. Edwards delin AD. 1758_ _J. Mynde sc._]
The mouth of the Pour-contrel, Cuttle-fish, and Calamary, is placed in
the fore-part of the head, between the arms, having an horny beak, hard
and hooked like a parrot’s, which some writers call the teeth. The eyes
of them all are nearly in the same position.
As the subject under examination resembles in some particulars all the
above kinds of Polypi, this short account of them may, it is hoped,
render the following description of it the more intelligible: and
with the same view, Mr. George Edwards, Fellow of the Royal Society,
has been so obliging as to make drawings of the animal itself, in
four different positions, and of the natural size; which drawings are
herewith presented to your Lordship.
Our Polypus is of the Pour-contrel kind, and I believe of that species
called Bolytæna; which is said to have a musky smell; but if ours had
such a smell, the spirits wherein it lies have taken it quite away.
In the drawing [_See_ TAB. XXIX. _Fig._ 1.] is shewn the anterior part
of this animal, which has much the appearance of a Star-fish. Here
are eight arms about three inches in length, united at their roots,
and placed circularly at equal distances in the same plane, which has
a considerable sinking towards the center. These arms diminish from
their rise to their extremities, and end exceedingly small. Near the
head they are quadrilateral, but the under-side contracting gradually
to an edge, they become towards the ends trilateral. On the upper side
of each arm are two rows of _acetabula_, or suckers, standing in a
beautiful order, as close as they can well be placed, and beginning
from the center of all the arms. These suckers are perfectly circular,
with edges flat on the top, and a round cavity in the middle of each.
They are largest in the widest part of the arm, and lessen as the arm
diminishes, till they become so small as hardly to be discernable. It
is very difficult to tell their number: I counted as far as fifty in a
row, but am certain there are many more; and I don’t imagine the eight
arms have so few as a thousand on them. They rise some height above the
surface of the skin; and wherever they are not, the skin of the arms
(unless on the under-side) is granulated like shagreen[160].
As in the other kinds of Polypi the mouth is placed between the arms
conspicuously enough, I expected to find it so in this; but the spirits
had contracted it so much, that I could discern no opening at all
where I thought the mouth must be; and therefore could not say, with
assurance, that the mouth was placed there. Under this difficulty
I applied to Sir Hans Sloane’s most valuable collection of natural
history in the British Musæum, where I found several species of this
kind of Polypi, and amongst the rest a small dried specimen of the same
species as ours, and a much larger one in spirits, of a species that
comes very near it.
This large specimen afforded the information I stood in need of: for
though here also the mouth was closed, and the beak drawn down into
the center between the arms, so as not to be seen at all; yet, by the
help of Dr. Morton and Mr. Empson, I had the satisfaction to see the
mouth opened, and the beak in the same situation, and of the same form
and substance, as in the other kinds of Polypi. Having gained this
knowledge, by applying the point of a bodkin, I easily felt the beak
in our Polypus; but in so small a subject it cannot be brought to view
without dissection, which is the reason it does not appear in these
drawings.
_Fig. 2._ represents the Polypus so placed as to shew the situation of
the eyes and the form of its body, and also in what manner the arms
are turned back in the specimen before us; but we may suppose them
thus disposed merely in the act of dying, and that when alive they are
moveable in all directions.
On that side of the body opposite to the eyes, and which therefore may
be termed the belly-part, there appears a transverse slit or opening
in the skin, not in a strait line, but a little semicircular; from the
anterior part whereof a tube or pipe proceeds, about one third of an
inch in length, smaller at the extremity, where it opens with a round
orifice, than at the base, and reaching to within a small distance of
the arms. As both the Cuttle-fish and Calamary have a pipe nearly in
the same situation, though somewhat different in figure, through which
they occasionally discharge an inky liquor, and some writers say the
fæces also, it is probable the pipe in this animal may serve to a like
purpose; and as the body of the Calamary is included in a case, the
slit across the body of this animal shews its belly part to have also
a sort of case, though on its back there is no separation as in the
Calamary.
Out of the aforesaid slit or opening a bag issues with a very slender
neck, extending towards the tail, and enlarging gradually to its end.
This bag is above half the length of the body, and appears like another
body appendant thereto. I should be intirely at a loss concerning
this bag, did not some passages in Mr. Turberville Needham’s curious
observations on the milt vessels of the Calamary enable me to form some
conjectures about its use.
Having dissected several Calamaries on the coast of Portugal, without
the least indication of milt or roe, and consequently without knowing
which were male or female, he was much surprised (about the middle
of the month of December) to find a new vessel forming itself in an
obvious part, and replete with a milky juice. This was an oval bag, in
which the milt vessels formed themselves gradually, the bag unfolding
as these framed and disposed themselves in bundles. Before that time
he had observed two collateral tubes, which are alike in both sexes;
but a regular progress in the expansion of the milt-bag and formation
of the milt-vessels had not presented itself before. Those tubes till
then appeared open at one extremity, much resembling the female parts
of generation in a snail, but did not terminate in a long oval bag
extending in a parallel with the stomach more than half the length of
the fish, as he found them afterwards when the milt vessels that filled
the whole cavity were ripe for ejection. The same ducts without the bag
are found in the female also, perhaps for the deposition of the spawn.
Vid. _Needham’s Microscopical Discoveries, cap._ v.
It appears from this account that the male Calamary (at a certain time
of the year only) has a bag wherein the milt-vessels are contained,
and that the female has no such bag. Since therefore the bag of our
Polypus is found in the same situation as that of the Calamary, (which
is also a kind of Polypus) we may suppose it to be the milt bag, and
that our Polypus is a male, taken at a time when the milt was ready for
ejection. In the dried specimen at the British Museum, and also in the
other specimens, there is the same opening, with the pipe that rises
above it towards the arms, but not the least appearance of the bag in
question: they are therefore probably females, or if males, were caught
before such bag was formed.
_Fig. 3._ presents another view of this Polypus, its arms extended
circularly with their under-sides next the eye, and the body so
disposed as to shew the transverse opening _a_, the oval bag issuing
therefrom _b_, and the pipe rising upwards towards the arms _c_.
_Fig. 4._ shews the Polypus with its transverse opening and the pipe
rising therefrom, but without the oval bag; it is figured thus by
Rondeletius and Gesner, and the specimen at the British Museum has also
this appearance. It is here shewn with the arms extended forwards. K
is a magnified figure of one of the _acetabula_, or suckers; of which
there are two rows on each arm of this Polypus, as before described.
Mr. Needham, in his description of the suckers of the Calamary,
(which he had many opportunities of examining whilst alive, and whose
mechanism is probably the same as in those of our Polypus) informs
us, “that the action of the suckers depends partly on their shape,
which, when they are extended resembles nearly that of an acorn-cup,
and partly upon a deep circular cartilaginous ring, armed with small
hooks, which is secured in a thin membrane something transparent,
by the projection of a ledge investing the whole circumference about
the middle of its depth, and not to be extracted without some force.
That each sucker is fastened by a tendinous stem to the arm of the
animal: which stem, together with part of the membrane that is below
the circumference of the cartilaginous ring, rises into and fills
the whole cavity when the animal contracts the sucker for action. In
this state whatever touches it is first held by the minute hooks, and
then drawn up to a closer adhesion by the retraction of the stem and
inferior part of the membrane, much in the same manner as a sucker of
wet leather sustains the weight of a small stone.” Vid. _Microscopical
Discoveries_, p. 22.
M shews one of the cartilaginous rings armed with small hooks, of its
real size. The ring this is drawn from was taken out of a large sucker
of a larger Polypus, and is presented herewith.
By these suckers the Polypus can fix itself to rocks, and prevent its
being tossed about in storms and tempests; but their principal use
must undoubtedly be to seize and hold its prey: and to this purpose
they are most admirably adapted; for when they are all applied and act
together, unless the Polypus pleases to withdraw them, nothing can get
from it whose strength is insufficient to tear off its arms. Something
like these suckers is found by the microscope in the minute fresh water
Polype, whereby it is able to bind down and manage a worm much larger
and seemingly stronger than itself[161]. In like manner the _stella
arborescens_ (which may also be called a Polypus), though it has not
suckers, yet by the hooks along its arms, and the multiplicity of
their branchings, which have been counted as far as 80,000, it can, by
spreading its arms abroad like a net, so fetter and entangle the prey
they inclose when they are drawn together, as to render it incapable of
exerting its strength: for however feeble these branches or arms may
singly be, their power united becomes surprising. And we are assured
nature is so kind to all these animals, that if in their struggles any
of their arms are broken off, after some time they will grow again; of
which a specimen at the British Museum is an undoubted proof; for a
little new arm is there seen sprouting forth in the room of a large one
that had been lost.
It is evident from what has been said, that the Sea Polypus must be
terrible to the inhabitants of the waters, in proportion to its size
(and Pliny mentions one whose arms were thirty feet in length); for the
close embraces of its arms and the adhesion of its suckers must render
the efforts of its prey ineffectual either for resistance or escape,
unless it be endued with an extraordinary degree of strength.
Sea Polypi are frequent in the Mediterranean: but Mr. Haviland of Bath,
to whom we are obliged for this, which is of a different species,
thinks it came from the West Indies, where it is called a Cat-fish.
That like it in the British Museum also came from thence.
As the Polypus I have endeavoured to describe is much contracted by
lying long in spirits, and dissection would destroy a specimen well
worth preserving, I hope to be excused if this account should be found
deficient in several particulars, or chargeable with some mistakes.
Permit me the honour to be,
My LORD,
Your Lordship’s
Most humble and obedient Servant,
H. Baker.
Strand, Nov. 23d, 1758.
CVIII. _A Description of the fossil Skeleton of an Animal found in the
Alum Rock near_ Whitby. _By Mr._ Wooller. _Communicated by_ Charles
Morton, _M. D. F.R.S._
[Read Nov. 23, 1758.]
IT is in this rock, that the Ammonitæ, or Snake-stones, as they are
commonly called, are found, which have undoubtedly been formed in the
_exuviæ_ of fishes of that shape; and though none of that species
are now to be met with in the seas thereabouts, yet they in many
particulars resemble the Nautilus, which is well known. The internal
substance of those stones, upon a section thereof, appears to be
a stony concretion, or muddy sparr. Stones of the same matter or
substance, in the shape of muscles, cockles, &c. of various sizes,
are also found therein, and now and then pieces of wood hardened and
crusted over with a stony substance are likewise found in it.
[Illustration: _Philos. Trans. Vol. L._ TAB. XXX. _p. 787_.
_Part of the Fossil Skeleton of an Animal as it appeared on and united
to the Allom Rock near_ Whitby, _Jan. 3. 1758_.
a. a. _&c. The Ammonitæ or Snake Stones_.
_J. Mynde sc._]
Many naturalists have already observed, that among the vast variety
of extraneous substances found at several depths in the earth, where
it is impossible they should have been bred, there are not so many
productions of the earth as of the sea; and it appears by the accounts
of authors both ancient and modern, that bones, teeth, and sometimes
entire skeletons of men and animals, have been dug up or discovered
in all ages, and the most remarkable for size commonly the most taken
notice of. In the first particular this skeleton will most probably
appear to have belonged to an animal of the lizard kind, quadruped and
amphibious; and as to its size, much larger than any thing of that kind
ever met with or found in this part of the world; though, from the
accounts of travellers, something similar is still to be met with in
many of the rivers, lakes, &c. of the other three.
When the annexed drawing thereof was taken January 5, 1758. [_See_
TAB. XXX.] there remained no more of the _vertebræ_ than is therein
expressed; that is, 10 between D and F, and 12 between G and H: but
when it was first discovered, about 10 years ago, they were compleat;
and there was besides the appearance of what was then thought to have
been fins, near the back part of the head at A, the same as appeared
further backward at E, when this design was made. The _vertebræ_, &c.
now wanting having been either dug up by curious persons, or washed
away by the violence of the waves at high water, and the accidental
beating about of stones, sand, &c. during that time; the water covering
this skeleton several feet at high water in spring tides; the cavities
in the rock still remaining as in the design.
The substance of the bones, with their _periostium_, on the covered
or under side, in most parts remains intire, and their native colour
in some places in a good measure preserved, and the teeth with their
smooth polish plainly to be discovered. Part of the mandible near the
extremity was covered with a shelf of the rock about three inches
thick; which being cut away and removed, both the mandibles appeared
under it compleat, with the teeth of the upper and under one, plainly
locking or passing by each other. These appeared to be of the _dentes
exerti_ or fang kind, as well as all the others in the narrow part of
the mandible, and further backwards they were not observed. From this
ledge or shelf the mandible towards B is single, and appears to be the
upper one of the living animal; and from the head not being exactly
in the line of the body, that part has been inverted, or quite turned
over, and the body itself, as appears from the transverse processes of
the _vertebræ_, lies on the right side. There appears one row of teeth
only on each side of the mandible, and they are about ¾ of an inch
asunder.
The mandible B A, the _cranium g h_, and the _vertebræ_ from D to F,
were attempted to be taken up whole; but the bones being rendered
extremely brittle, and the rock in which they were fixed being a
brittle blackish slate, with joints or fissures running in every
direction, would not hold together: the whole therefore fell in many
pieces, the _vertebræ_ in the joints only, which makes them easy to
join together again, and besides shows very plainly the transverse and
spinal processes thereof, with the foramen in the latter for the spinal
marrow. It was now that a piece of the _os femoris_, about four inches
long, shewed itself in the sparry concreted substance at E, together
with a piece of the _os innominatum_, to which it had been articulated
or joined. This, with what has been before remarked, will sufficiently
prove this to have been an animal of the quadruped, and probably, from
the shape of the cranium peculiar to fishes, of the amphibious kind. At
the same time many pieces of the _costæ_ or ribs, as broke and crushed
up against the _vertebræ_, were plainly visible. The cavities of all
the bones were filled with a substance, which appeared the same as the
rock itself; and the substance on each side the _vertebræ_, as they
laid, was a mixture of sparry concreted matter with that of the rock
itself, which is a blackish slate. The animal, when living, must have
been at least 12 or 14 feet long. And the dimensions of the whole,
or particular parts of the skeleton, may be measured from the scale
annexed thereto.
This skeleton lay about six yards from the foot of the cliff, which is
about sixty yards in perpendicular height, and must have been covered
by it probably not much more than a century ago. The cliff there
is composed of various _strata_, beginning from the top, of earth,
clay, marle, stones both hard and soft, of various thicknesses, and
intermixed with each other, till it comes down to the black slate or
alum rock, and about 10 or 12 feet deep in this rock, this skeleton
laid horizontally, and exactly as designed. The probability, that this
cliff has formerly covered this animal, and extended much more into
the sea, is not in the least doubted of by those that know it. The
various _strata_, of which it is composed, are daily mouldering and
falling down; and the bottom, being the slaty alum rock, is also daily
beat, washed, and wore away, and the upper parts undermined, whence
many thousand tuns often tumble down together. Many antient persons now
living, whose testimony can be no way doubted of, remember this very
cliff extending in some places twenty yards further out than it does at
present. In short there is sufficient evidence, that at the beginning
it must have extended near a mile further down to the sea than it does
at present; and so much the sea has there gained of the land.
These are the principal facts and circumstances attending the situation
and discovery of this skeleton; which from the condition it is in, and
from the particular disposition of the _strata_ above the place where
it is found, seem clearly to establish the opinion, and almost to a
demonstration, that the animal itself must have been antediluvian,
and that it could not have been buried or brought there any otherwise
than by the force of the waters of the universal deluge. The different
_strata_ above this skeleton never could have been broken through at
any time, in order to bury it, to so great a depth as upwards of 180
feet; and consequently it must have been lodged there, if not before,
at least at the time when those _strata_ were formed, which will not
admit of a later date than that above-mentioned.
_P. S._ In the xlixth vol. page 639, of the _Philosophical
Transactions_, an animal is described by Mr. Edwards, which was
brought from the Ganges, and resembles this in every respect. He
calls it _Lacerta (crocodilus) ventre marsupio donato, faucibus
Merganseris rostrum æmulantibus_.
[Illustration: _Philos. Trans. Vol. L._ TAB. XXXI. _p. 791_.
PHŒNICIAN Coins.
_J. Mynde sc._]
CIX. _A Dissertation upon the_ Phœnician _Numeral Characters antiently
used at_ Sidon. _In a Letter to the Rev._ Thomas Birch, _D. D. Secret.
R. S. from the Rev._ John Swinton, _M. A. of_ Christ-Church, Oxon.
_F.R.S._
[Read Dec. 7, 1758.]
Reverend Sir,
HAVING, by the assistance of the Palmyrene numeral characters, lately
made a discovery, which may perhaps hereafter be of considerable
service to chronology; I could not longer defer, though now deeply
engaged in other matters, communicating it to the Royal Society. Nor
will the memoir containing this, I flatter myself, be deemed altogether
unworthy the attention of that learned and illustrious body. For,
unless I am greatly deceived, it will bid fair to ascertain, with a
sufficient degree of precision, the Phœnician dates of several antient
Sidonian coins, one of which was struck above a century before the
birth of CHRIST, hitherto utterly unknown; and evince the notation of
the Phœnicians, at least those of Sidon, when they first appeared, to
have been extremely similar to, if not nearly the same with, that of
the Palmyrenes.