282 Mr Connell's Analysis of Fossil Scales 



formerly examined. Instead of the fine lustre exhibited by 

 the Burdiehouse, Craighall, and Tilgate scales, those of Clash- 

 bennie had a quite dull aspect, and all the appearance of dried 

 or calcined bone. Their colour was white, with occasional trans- 

 fused portions of the red sandstone matrix in which they were 

 imbedded. Their hardness inconsiderable. Their shape was 

 in general imperfectly preserved, but the portion analysed ap- 

 peared to have been a fragment of a rhomboidal scale. Mr 

 Robison informs me, that the scales sent to me were exactly si- 

 milar to those which have been found in the same place actually 

 covering a portion of a fossil fish. 



Fragments were selected for analysis as free as possible from 

 any intermixture of the matter of the matrix. They were parts of 

 a scale an inch long, by half an inch broad, and an eighth thick, 

 which appeared, however, to have been a portion of a larger one. 



The result obtained by the same process as formerly was as 

 follows : 



Phosphate of Lime, with a little Fluoride of Calcium, 91.42 



Carbonate of Lime, 7-05 



Chloride of Potassium, 0.27 



Water, 0.97 



Sandstone matrix, 2.38 



Phosphate of Magnesia, trace. 

 Animal matter, trace. 



102.09 



Thus these scales did not differ more from those formerly 

 examined in external appearance, than in chemical constitution. 

 Whilst in all the latter, the perishable animal matter appeared 

 to have been more or less replaced by siliceous or calcareous 

 matter, in the present instance there seems to have been no sub- 

 stitution at all. The animal matter is gone, but nothing has 

 come in its place, the permanent bone-earth alone remaining. 

 But this is merely a difference in the state of preservation, de- 

 pending on the circumstances under which the fossils have been 

 preserved. A more important distinction is found in the rela- 

 tive proportions of the phosphate and carbonate of lime. There 

 was reason to believe that this proportion had been originally 

 nearly the same in the three different fossil scales formerly exa- 

 mined, and that all of them had borne a strong analogy in this 



