United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There, too, were the virgæ, or rods with thorns in them; the flagra, lori, and plumbati, whips and thongs, cutting with iron or bruising with lead; the heavy clubs; the hook for digging into the flesh; the ungula, said to have been a pair of scissors; the scorpio, and pecten, iron combs or rakes for tearing.
The Viola tricolor is often known as "three faces in a hood," and the Aconitum napellus as "Venus's chariot drawn by two doves." The Stellaria holostea is "lady's white petticoat," and the Scandix pecten is "old wife's darning-needles." One of the names of the Campion is plum-pudding, and "spittle of the stars" has been applied to the Nostoc commune.
The eye of the Pecten presents a retina, a cornea, a lens of cellular structure like our own. There is even that peculiar inversion of retinal elements which is not met with, in general, in the retina of the invertebrates.
The presence among them of Lutraria rugosa and Pecten polymorphus, not known to range farther north in the actual seas than the coast of Portugal, indicates a somewhat warmer temperature at the time when they flourished.
Pecten Patagoniensis, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." 5. Venus Munsterii, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." Arca Bonplandiana, d'Orbigny, "Voyage, Pal." According to M. d'Orbigny, the sandstone extends westward along the coast as far as Port S. Antonio, and up the R. Negro far into the interior: northward I traced it to the southern side of the Rio Colorado, where it forms a low denuded plain.
It is true that about forty of them range from British to high northern latitudes; but several of them, as, for example, Lutraria rugosa and Pecten polymorphous, which are abundant, are not known at present to range farther north than the coast of Portugal, and seem to indicate a warmer temperature than now prevails on the coast where we find them fossil.
S.P. Woodward, are no longer inhabitants of the contiguous sea, as, for example, Strombus bubonius, which is still living on the West Coast of Africa, and Cerithium procerum, found at Mozambique; others are Mediterranean species, as Pecten Jacobaeus and P. polymorphus.
Hence M. d'Orbigny, not having himself examined this country, has concluded that there are here two distinct formations; but the Spirifer and T. aenigma were certainly included in the same bed with the Pecten and Ostrea, whence I extracted them; and the geologist M. Domeyko sent home the two Terebratulae with the other-named shells, from the same locality, without specifying that they came from different beds.
Hence, though both sand and mud originated simultaneously, the one near the land, the other far from it, the sands in every locality where a shore became submerged might constitute the underlying deposit. Ostrea columba. Syn. Gryphaea columba. Ostrea carinata. Chalk marl and chloritic sand. Terebrirostra lyra, Sowerby. Pecten 5-costatus. White chalk and chloritic sand.
These are based on a purely marine deposit, with Pecten, Modiola, Avicula, and Thracia. Below this, again, come limestones and shales, partly of brackish and partly of fresh-water origin, in which many fish, especially species of Lepidotus and Microdon radiatus, are found, and a crocodilian reptile named Macrorhynchus.
Word Of The Day