of them furnishing examples of a delicate diaper work, like that so
admired in our more ornate Gothic buildings, such as Westminster Abbey,
or Canterbury and Chichester Cathedrals, only greatly more exquisite in
their design and finish. The scroll shells, a very numerous section of
the class in the earlier ages, such as Maclurea, Euomphalus, Clymenia,
and the great family of the ammonites, were volutes of varying
proportions, but not less graceful than the ornament of similar
proportions so frequently introduced into Greek and Roman architecture,
and of which we have such prominent examples in the capitals of the
Ionic, Corinthian, and composite orders. In what is known as the modern
Ionic the spiral of the volute is not all on one plane; it is a
Euomphalus: in the central volutes of the Corinthian the spiral is an
open one; it is a Lituite or Gyroceras: in the ancient Ionic it is
either wholly flat, as in Planorbus or the upper side of Maclurea, or
slightly relieved, as in the ammonites. There is no form of the volute
known to the architect which may not be found in the rocks, but there
are many forms in the rocks unknown to the architect. Nor are the
spire-like shells (see Fig. 105) less remarkable for the rich and varied
style of their ornamentation than the whorled ones. They are spires,
pinnacles, turrets, broaches; ornate, in some instances, beyond the
reach of the architect, and illustrative, in almost all, of his happiest
forms and proportions. We detect among the fossils the germs of numerous
designs developed in almost every department of art; but merely to
enumerate them would require a volume. One form of the old classic lamp
was that of the nautilus; another, that of _Gyphaea incurva_; the zigzag
mouldings of the Norman Gothic may be found in the carinated oysters of
the Greensand; the more delicate frettings of similar form which
roughened the pillars of a somewhat later age occur on Conularia and the
dorsal spines of Gyracanthus. The old corals, too, abound in ornamental
patterns, which man, unaware of their existence at the time, devised
long after for himself. In an article on calico printing, which forms
part of a recent history of Lancashire, there are a few of the patterns
introduced, backed by the recommendation that they were the most
successful ever tried. Of one of these, known as "Lane's Net," there
sold a greater number of pieces than of any other pattern ever brought
into the market. It led to m