[wHiTEaves] FOSSIL FISHES OF THE DEVONIAN ROCKS 249 
(6) BoTHrIoLEPIS CANADENSIS, Whiteaves. 
Plates [ and II. 
Pterichthys (Bothriolepis) Canadensis, Whiteaves. 1880. Amer. Journ. Sci., 
ser. 3, vol. xx, p. 135; and (1881) Canad. Nat. & Quart. 
Journ. Sc., vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 26 and 27. 
Bothriolepis Canadensis, Cope. 1885. Amer. Naturalist, vol. xix, p. 290, woode. 
Pterichthys (Bothriolepis) Canadensis, Whiteaves. 1887. Trans. Roy. Soe. 
Canada for 1886, vol. iv, sect. iv, p. 101, pls. vi—ix. 
Bothriolepis Canadensis, Traquair. 1888. Geol. Mag., dec. 3, vol. v, p. 509; and 
Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 6, vol. ii, p. 496, pl. xviii, fig. 6. 
ss ce Whiteaves. 1889. Trans. Royal Soc. Canada for 1888, vol. 
vi, sect. iv, p. 91. 
OG a A. Smith Woodward. 1891. Cnt. Foss Fishes Brit Mus., 
ef $F pt. ii, p. 224, fig. 34, and p. 228; and (1892) Geol. Mag, 
dec. 3, vol. ix, p. 484, fig. 2. 
ee “ Patten, 1904, Biol. Bulletin, Mar. Lab. Wood’s Holl, Mass., 
vol. vii, no. 2, pp. 113—124, figs. 1—6. 
os 4 Traquair. 1904. Palæontogr. Soc., vol. Ilviii, Fishes Old 
Red Sandstone, pt. ii, no. 2, pp. 109—114, figs. 57—59. 
Type.—A nearly complete specimen of the armoured portion of the 
fish; in the Museum of the Geological Survey of Canada. 
It would seem that the discovery of fossil plants and fishes and 
even of Bothriolepis, in the shales and sandstones of Scaumenac Bay 
and its immediate vicinity, was first made by Dr. Abraham Gesner in 
1842. For, in a “ Report on the Geological Survey of the Province 
of New Brunswick” for that year, published at St. John in 1843, Dr. 
Gesner says that the sandstones and shales east of Escuminac Bay 
(which he refers to the coal formation) contain the “ remains of veget- 
ables,” and that he found in them also the “ remains of fishes, and a 
small species of tortoise, with fossil foot marks.” It is at least highly 
probable that it was specimens of the whole or part of the highly 
sculptured exoskeleton of the Canadian Bothriolepis that Dr. Gesner 
took for a small species of tortoise. He nowhere tells us whether he 
collected any fossils at this locality, and if he did, no one knows what 
has become of them. 
For many years no notice seems to have been taken of Dr. Gesner’s 
discovery. But on September 19th, 1879, Dr. R. W. Ells, of the 
Geological Survey of Canada, found an organism which proved to be 
a mould of the ventral surface of a Pterichthys-like fish, with one of 
the pectoral appendages in situ, in a concretionary nodule at Scaumenac 
Bay. The significance of this specimen was, of course, obvious, and 
at the earliest practicable opportunity Dr. Ells revisited this locality. 
and obtained three more specimens of the same species in June, 1880. 
