in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 203 
my sentiments. That the apprehension was an unfounded one, I knew but too well, 
by an appeal to the actual state of my own mind, which admitted no other feeling 
except admiration for the great talent and discrimination which he had evinced. 
Under these circumstances, I feared) lest my refusal of the compliment which. he 
paid me might be interpreted by him as indicative of any lurking sentiment of im- 
patience under the correction of a:misconception, and, consequently, of an unfriendly 
feeling to the cause of truth and of science. 
If I felt any degree of uneasiness whatever, it was in the reflection, that I had, 
in two instances, been the sole cause of others partaking with me in the imperfect 
view which I had entertained: In the first instance, I was hurt that the miscon- 
ception had found its way in a work so replete with invaluable facts as that which 
Mr Lyett has published ; and, in the second place, that I should equally have mis- 
led another geologist, from whom the most brilliant discoveries in geological science 
have emanated ; I allude to Dr Bucxtanp. But I am convinced that these two in- 
dividuals possess too enlarged minds not to make a generous allowance for any mis- 
apprehension in the case of an animal, which appears, no less in organic structure 
than in the date of its existence, to have been the very first connecting link between 
fish and saurian reptiles. 
We are, in point of fact, only beginning to be aware, that, in an earlier period 
of the history of our globe, certain of the largest animals of the waters were endowed 
with the mixed organization of fish and reptile; that in a later period of the globe, 
pure reptiles have multiplied ; and that the attributes of too many fish and reptiles 
have been hitherto confounded. M. Acassiz has already removed from the class 
which had been assigned to them, several animals of preconceived reptilian character: 
Caithness has lost a trionyx, which now proves to be a fish. The chalk of Sussex 
has also lost another large reptile, which, in a similar manner, turns out to bea sau- 
roid fish of a genus differing from that of Burdiehouse, and possessing a head, jaws, 
and teeth as large as those of a crocodile ten feet long. ‘* The teeth,” M. Acassiz 
writes to me, “are as large as those represented in Fig. 8. of Plate IX.” 
In short, many saurian reptiles, which were supposed to have lorded it over lesser 
tribes, have been dismissed from their administration; while an interchange of repti- 
lian and finny attributes has afforded the basis for forming a new natural’ history 
cabinet. 
Such are the original views opened out to us by the recent discoveries of M. 
AGASSIZ. 
Statements, however, have recently appeared. in two consecutive foot-notes ap- 
pended to the reports of the British Association of Science, and of the Royal So- 
ciety of Edinburgh, (See the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for October 
1834 and January 1835), that M. Acasstz’s investigation was not only “ confir- 
matory” of Professor JamxEson’s previously expressed opinion upon the animal re- 
mains of Burdiehouse, but that myself, as well as other geologists, (not even ex- 
ce 
