1 843-44.] OLD RED SANDSTONE. 229 



Dinkel, in 1844, for the " Medals of Creation" by Dr. 

 G. Mantell, and were reproduced in the " Vestiges of 

 Creation." But Dinkel, so well trained, and so long 

 Agassiz's artist of fossil fishes, was not successful ; and 

 he failed also in trying the restoration of another rather 

 curious form of Old Red fish, the Coccostens or bcrry-on- 

 bonc. These two examples show what strange creatures 

 existed during the Devonian period, and the credit of 

 determining their place is due to Agassiz's keen eyes 

 and great knowledge of comparative anatomy ; for he 

 did not hesitate, on receiving the first broken and very 

 imperfect specimens, to say that the creatures must have 

 been fishes. As Miller says : " I received new light from 

 the researches of Agassiz which, while it did not show my 

 way more clearly, rendered it at least more interesting 

 by associating with it one of those wonderful truths, 

 stranger than fiction, which rise ever and anon from the 

 profounder depths of science, and whose use, in their 

 connection with the human intellect, seems to be to 

 stimulate the faculties. I have often had occasion to re- 

 fer to the one-sided condition of tail characteristic of the 

 ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone." "It character- 

 izes," says Agassiz, "the fish of all the most ancient for- 

 mations. At one certain point in the descending scale, 

 Nature entirely alters her plan in the formation of the 

 tail. All the ichthyolites above are fashioned after one 

 particular type all below after another and different 

 type." 1 



In his preface to " The Old Red Sandstone," Agas- 

 siz says : " So true is it that observation alone is a 



1 "The Old Red Sandstone," pp. 115-116, Boston, 1854. 



