Art. I. — On the Discovery of Fossil Fish in the Old Red 

 Sandstone Rocks of the Mansfield District. 



With Plates I, II, and III. 



By George Sweet. 



[Read April 6, 1889.] 



Some twenty-five years ago, the attention of Mr. Selwyn, 

 then Director of the Geological Survey of Victoria, was 

 directed to some specimens of a purplish red sandstone rock, 

 containing a few fragments of plant remains from the Battery 

 Hill, near Mansfield.* The fossils were submitted to Pro- 

 fessor McCoy, who studied them, and in consequence, 

 recommended Mr. Selwyn to colour the Mansfield area as 

 Old Red Sandstone. 



Some twenty years after, Mr. Reginald A. F. Murray, the 

 {)resent Government Geologist, during his geological ex- 

 amination of the district, obtained fossils which had been 

 found by Messrs. Tolmie, sons of the then owner of the 

 Dueran Station. -f- 



These were also examined by Professor McCoy, who has 

 been kind enough to write to me as follows concerning 

 them: — " Mr. Murray brought me some vegetable fragments 

 and the remarkable cephalic shield, to which I have given the 

 name of Rhytidaspis murrayi, in his honour, as well as the 

 first example of the large Ichthyodorulite, which you have 

 since found in such abundance, so curiously resembling, both 

 in size, shape, and tuberculation, the Oyracanthus obliquus 

 (McCoy) from the base of the carboniferous series of the 

 North of England, as to suggest that that genus might not 

 be Selachian, but belong to the head and other parts of the 

 body of fish of different affinities. |" These relics were of too 



* " Notes ou the Physical Geography, Geology, and Mineralogy of Vic- 

 toria," one of the International Exhibition Essays, 1866, by Mr. A. R. C. 

 Selwyn. 



t Memorandum of Mr. R. A. F. Murray, Geological Surveyor of the 

 Department of Mines. 



J Memorandum of Professor McCoy, C.M.G. 



B 



