1 74 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



shortened, and tlie vertical depth of the head so much increased, 

 that the profile resembled that of a gurnard. The lower jaw, how- 

 ever, projected nearly an inch beyond the snout. 



Mr W. NeAvtou MacCartney drew attention to some bones of a 

 raptorial bird, found at a depth of fourteen feet in the Blairdardie 

 clay. These bones, from the collection of Dr Robertson, Renfrew, 

 consist of the humerus, radius, and ulna of a bird about the size of 

 a buzzard. The occurrence of bird remains in our clays, he 

 remarked, was rare, this being the third known instance — the first 

 being in Aberdeenshire, and the second at Bridge of Johnstone, 

 near Paisley. A larger number of bones, of the same specimen, 

 might have been gathered at Blairdardie if any one interested in 

 such remains had been present; only the large ones, however, were 

 retained by the workmen, who cast the others away as useless. 



PAPERS READ. 



I. — On the so-called Labyrintliodont, Parabatrachus. (Owen.) 

 By Professor J. Young, M.D., F.G.S. 

 Plate I., Figs. 1, 2, and 3. 

 The specimen described by Professor Owen in 1853 as Para- 

 latrachus, a new genus of carboniferous Batrachia, was believed to 

 have been obtained from Carluke, in the Lanarkshire coalfield — a 

 belief which the character of the matrix amply confirms; more- 

 over, similar bones of various sizes are frequently found in that 

 neighbourhood. Having examined several of these bones, as well 

 as the original specimen above mentioned (which is now deposited in 

 the British Museum), I have come to the conclusion that it is not 

 batrachian at all, but the maxillary of a Megalichthys, or other 

 ganoid closely related to that genus. Inspection of the fossil 

 shows that it has been much fractured; that, in fact, the bone is 

 incomplete posteriorly; and that it terminates anteriorly, not by a 

 smooth face as in the original figure, Geol. Journal, IX., PI. II., or 

 in the copy reproduced in Plate I., Fig. 1, of tliis volume, but by a 

 rough surface as in Plate I., Fig. 3, suturally united with the pre- 

 maxiUary. The small equal teeth are, further, small only because 

 large part of their length is still embedded in the fine shaly matrix. 

 Finally, the scale which is seen on the same slalD is not Holoptychius, 

 but Megalichthys. The value of this last fact lies in the frequency 

 of this coincidence, and in the frequent enamelling of the bone in 

 question. Thus, Fig. 2, Plate I., shows a jaw on which a patch of 



