No. 1.] ^ATIITEAVES — NEW SPECIES OF PTERICHTHYS. 23 



ON A NEW SPECIES OF PTERICHTHYS, ALLIED 

 TO BOTHRLOLEFIS ORNATA EICHWALD, FROM 

 THE DEVONIAN ROCKS OF THE NORTH SIDE 

 OF THE BAIE DES CHALEURS.^^ 



By J. F. Whiteaves. 



The nomeuclature of some of the Devonian Placoderms of 

 the sub-order Ostracostei of Huxley is still iu a state of great 

 confusioQ. Thus, FtericJitlujs Agassiz aud Botliriolepis Eichwald, 

 are both quoted by Pander as synonymous in part with Asterole- 

 pis Eichwald, while the Asterolepis of Agassiz aud Hugh Miller 

 is regarded by the same authority as synonymous in part with 

 Homostiiis Asmuss, and in part with Heterostlus. On the other 

 hand, Prof. R. Owen claims fthat Pterlchtlujs should be retained 

 in preference to Asterolepis and Botliriolepis Eichwald, on the 

 ground that " no recoiz-nizable o-eneric characters were associated" 

 with the latter names ; and, as this view has been very generally 

 accepted by paleontologists, it will be adopted provisionally in 

 these notes. 



The only remains of fossil fishes yet recorded as occurring in 

 the Paleozoic rocks of North America which may prove to be re- 

 ferable to the genus Fterichthi/s, are some isolated scales from the 

 Catskill group of Tioga County, Pennsylvania, described by Prof, 

 Hall in 1843 as Sauripteris Taylori, but which Dr. Newberry 

 thinks have the characteristic sculpture of Botliriolepis. The 

 name Fterichthys Nbrwoodeiisis, although inadvertently cited by 

 Mr. S. A. Miller, on page 238 of his " American Paleozoic 

 Fossils, " should have been rejected long ago, for in the first vo- 

 lume of the Second Series of this Journal, dated 18-16, Drs. Nor- 

 wood and Owen showed that the specimen for which it was 

 suggested is the type of their genus Macroj)etaliclitliys, and of a 

 species which they described as M. raphe idolab is. 



In the summer of 1879, Mr. R. W. Ells, M. A., of the Geolo- 

 gical Survey of Canada, had the good fortune to find, in a con- 

 cretionary nodule of argillite from the north side of the Baie des 

 Chaleurs immediately opposite Dalhousie, a mould of the plastron 



♦ Reprinted from the American Journal of Science for August 1880. 

 t Paleontology, Second Edition, page 141. 



