On a Fossil Octopus (Calaïs Newboldi, J. De C. Sby. MS.) from the Cretaceous of the Lebanon

Abstract

I am indebted to Mr. C. Davies Sherborn, F.G.S., for drawing my attention to a very remarkable and beautiful fossil from the Cretaceous formation of the Lebanon, Syria, obtained about 1846 by Lieut. T. J. Newbold, and presented by him to the Museum of the Geological Society, where it has since remained. In 1846 it attracted the attention of Mr. J. De Carlo Sowerby, who evidently intended to describe it, ‘at a more convenient season’ which never arrived; for he wrote upon it:— ‘ Calaïs Newbouldii ’ (read Newboldi ). ‘ Ceph. Octopoda . Genus ineditum . Abdomen alis triangularibus instructum . ‘ E strato calcareo tertiario Montis Libani a D . (T. J.) Newbo(u)ld effossum 1846. J. De C. Sowerby .’ The only criticisms that I would venture to make upon this label are (1) that the stratum of limestone from the Lebanon, whence the fossil was derived, is not of ‘Tertiary’ but Cretaceous age; (2) that the specimen is marked in pencil on the back ‘Major Newbold, Mt. Lebanon’ (whose initials were ‘T. J.’= ‘Thomas John’) not D ., and there should be no u in Newbold. He is spoken of in 1842 as ‘Lieut. Newbold’ (Proc. Geol. Soc. 1842, pp. 782-792), and by Murchison in his Presidential Address, Feb. 17th, 1843, as ‘Lieut. Newbold, of the East India Company's service’ (Proc. Geol. Soc. vol. iv. 1846, p. 137). In the ‘National Biography,’ 1894, pp. 314–315, Newbold is spoken of as one of the most accomplished officers in the East India Company‘s service. He was made a Lieutenant in