OBSERVATIONS ON THE GENUS OF FOSSIL 



FISHES CALLED BY PROFESSOR COPE, 



PORTHEUS, BY DR. LEIDY, 



XIPHACTINUS. 



O. p. HAY. 



The earliest reference which we have to any remains of the 

 genus of fishes usually called Portheus is that found in Man- 

 tell's Geology of Sussex, p. 241, PI. XLII, 1822. No systematic 

 name is there assigned to this fish. Later, Louis Agassiz, in 

 his Poissons Fossilcs, vol. v, p. 99, referred to Mantell's descrip- 

 tion, and refigured the materials {op. cit., PI. XXV b, Pigs, i a, 

 16), presenting at the same time additional figures of remains 

 from the same locality (PI. XXV a, Fig. 3 ; PI. XXV b, Figs. 

 2, 3). All these he included, with other remains, under the 

 name Hypsodon lezuesiensis. 



In 1 87 1, in Proc. Anier. Philos. Soe., vol. xii, p. 175, Pro- 

 fessor Cope established the genus Portheus, founding it on 

 materials collected in the cretaceous deposits of Western 

 Kansas. The type of tha genus was called Portheus molossus. 

 Later, in the same volume, p. 330, Cope recognized the affinity 

 of the remains figured by Agassiz, as above cited, to those of 

 Portheus, as well as the fact that other remains had been 

 included by Agassiz under the term Hypsodon which were not 

 congeneric with Portheus. Professor Cope, therefore, restricted 

 Hypsodon to those bones and teeth which differed generically 

 from his own American materials, and included the remainder 

 under Portheus. In this same paper, pp. 333, 335' Cope also 

 referred to Portheus a species which he had described in 1870 

 {Proc. Amer. Philos. Soe., vol. xi, p. 533) under the name of 

 Saurocephabis thanmas. Both these species and others were 

 fully described in his Cretaceous Vertebrates, published in 1875. 



At this point it may be noted that in the year 1870 {Proc. 

 Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., p. 12) Dr. Joseph Leidy described from 

 the Cretaceous of Kansas the spine of a fish which he called 



