FISHES OF THE UPPER SILURIAN ROCKS. 
It is known to all geologists that in the Old World a considerable num- 
ber of fish remains are reported to have been found in the middle and up- 
per portion of the Upper Silurian system. It is true that the ichthyic char- 
acter of the peculiar organisms here referred to, those named Pteraspis 
and Scaphaspis by Huxley and Lankester, has been doubted by many and 
denied by some, but the authors mentioned are positive in their statements, 
and there are none among comparative anatomists. whose dicta deserve 
more respect than theirs. We do not yet know whether J’teraspis and 
Scaphaspis had under jaws, but if they should prove to have been destitute of 
these organs, they would be excluded from the class of fishes by some mod- 
ern zoologists. We know, however, that they were aquatic in habit, fusi- 
form in shape, and for locomotive organs were provided with fins, and 
that, as in most of the best known fishes of the present and Paleozoic faunas, 
the body was protected by either plates or scales. Without going further 
into this mooted question, and leaving to time their assignment to their true 
places in the animal series, we may at least say that the assemblage of char- 
acters which these fossils present is such as to permit us to compare them 
only with fishes, and should they be excluded from this class, there is no 
other yet defined into which they could be received. Hence, for the time 
being at least, it is manifestly wiser to consider them as fishes. 
Accepting, then, the verdict of Huxley and Lankester, we may say 
that fishes have been found in the Upper Silurian in the Old World. Un- 
til recently it could have been said with truth that they had not been found 
in America. This, however, can no longer be asserted; for Prof. EK. W. 
Claypole has obtained from the middle of the Upper Silurian series’ in 
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