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one of these instructive zones in at least six districts. There is 
one in Wiirtemberg, another in Bavaria; two are known in 
France (Departments of Calvados and Vassy); a fifth occurs in 
the cliffs of Whitby, and a sixth in the nodule-bed of the Upper 
Lias at Ilminster, Somersetshire. The careful exploration of the 
latter was undertaken by the late Mr. Charles Moore, whose 
unique collection is now arranged in the Bath Royal Literary 
and Scientific Institution ; and it is to this beautiful series of 
fossil fishes that the following brief notes refer. 
Fourteen genera and an uncertain number of species are found 
in these Upper Lias fish beds in Germany, France, and Yorkshire ; 
but as yet only five or six genera are represented in the nodules 
from Ilminster. Of these few forms, all except Pachycormus are 
rare. 
LEPIDOTUS. 
The first fish to be mentioned is no better preserved at 
Ilminster than in the other localities ; and it has already been so 
thoroughly investigated by Quenstedt in Wirtemberg, that the 
Moore collection does not add anything to our knowledge of its 
skeleton. It is a rhombic-scaled fish shaped much like a carp, 
and was originally mistaken for a species of this genus by the 
French naturalist, H. D. de Blainville, who named it Cyprinus 
elvensis in 1818. When Agassiz determined the existence of the 
primitive group of ‘ganoid” fishes about ten years later, he 
rightly removed the species from the bony fishes to this group, 
making it the type of his genus Lepidotes (1852) or Lepidotus 
(1833), but entirely re-naming it, Lepidotus gigas. Since Quenstedt’s 
memoir in 1843, most writers have correctly described it as 
Lepidotus elvensis. The first specimen recorded in England is 
figured in Baker’s “‘ History of Northamptonshire” (1830), and 
was obtained from the Upper Lias of Stowe-Nine-Churches in 
that county. <A closely allied species, Lepidotus semiserratus, 
occurs at Whitby, 
