In
Shakespeare's country their connection with thunder is well known, so
that in all probability a belemnite is the original of the beautiful
lines in 'Cymbeline':--
Fear no more the lightning flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone,
where the distinction between the lightning and the thunderbolt is
particularly well indicated. In every part of Europe belemnites and
stone hatchets are alike regarded as thunderbolts; so that we have the
curious result that people confuse under a single name a natural fossil
of immense antiquity and a human product of comparatively recent but
still prehistoric date. Indeed, I have had two thunderbolts shown me at
once, one of which was a large belemnite, and the other a modern Indian
tomahawk. Curiously enough, English sailors still call the nearest
surviving relatives of the belemnites, the squids or calamaries of the
Atlantic, by the appropriate name of sea-arrows.
Many other natural or artificial objects have added their tittle to the
belief in thunderbolts. In the Himalayas, for example, where awful
thunderstorms are always occurring as common objects of the country, the
torrents which follow them tear out of the loose soil fossil bones and
tusks and teeth, which are universally looked upon as lightning-stones.
The nodules of pyrites, often picked up on beaches, with their false
appearance of having been melted by intense heat, pass muster easily
with children and sailor folk for the genuine thunderbolts.
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