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Xeavc9 from m\> IWote^^BooF^* 

 6eoIog^ in tbe flDaftino* 



By Mrs. Alice Bodington. 



A SPECIAL interest attaches to any phenomena going on 

 under our own eyes or in our own times that show those 

 processes still in action, which have so curiously shaped 

 and carved the crust of our earth in past ages, and those which 

 have preserved or destroyed animal and vegetable forms. 



When Hugh Miller discovered his wonderful fish of the Old 

 Red Sandstone, he described the Pterichthys and other fossil forms 

 as having apparently died in agony, with outstretched and stiffened 

 fins, as though overwhelmed by some great cataclysm ; perhaps, 

 some volcanic upheaval of the sea-bottom. I have come across a 

 description in the A?ner. Naturalist for Aug., 1892, which forcibly 

 reminds me of Hugh Miller's theory of sudden destruction. 



The history of the Tile-Fish {Lopholatilus chamceleonticeps) is 

 among the strangest known : — " So far as we have any information 

 no one, fisherman or naturalist, ever saw a tile fish until March, 

 1879, ^vhen a Gloucester (U.S.) fishing schoontr took 6,000 lbs." 

 "In 1880 and 1881, a few were taken by the U.S. Fish Commis- 

 sion steamer. In March and April, 1882, vessels arriving in 

 American ports reported passing through large numbers of dead 

 and dying fish off the southern coast of New England and Long 

 Island. Vessels reported sailing for forty to sixty miles through 

 floating fish (in one instance, through one hundred and fifty miles),, 

 so that it became evident that a vast destruction had taken place. 

 It was estimated that an area of 5,000 to 7,000 square statute 

 miles were so thickly covered that the total numbers must have 

 exceeded a billion. The next year the Fish Commission searched 

 in vain for these fish on the ground where they were formerly so 

 abundant, and no one has since reported a specimen." If this 

 mysterious destruction had occurred near land, and the myriads of 

 dead fish had been gradually covered, we should have much the 

 same condition of things as that imagined by Hugh Miller. 



A curious piece of contemporary geology is being worked out 



