FISHES OF THE DEVONIAN AGE. 67 
the enameled and buried portions the spine must have been two inches wide, 
but it tapered rapidly upward, terminating in a slender acute point. The 
exposed surface is more completely covered with ridges similar in character, 
and the pectination is more crowded than in any other species known to 
me. In its broad base and its general and uniform ornamentation this spine 
has some resemblance to C. speciosus, St. J. & W., specimens of which have 
been in my hands, but the line of demarkation between the ornamented and 
buried portions is less oblique, showing that the spine was more erect; the 
ridges are considerably coarser and the form is straighter. The pectination 
is also less oblique and closer, compared with the coarseness of the ridges. 
Formation and locality: Hamilton group, near the middle of the Moscow 
shale; Kashong Creek, Yates County, N. Y., where it was obtained by Mr. 
Berlin H. Wright, for whom it is named. 
GONIODUS, nov. gen. 
Teeth numerous, composing a roughened pavement, small, variable in 
size and form; generally subtriangular in outline, depressed, with the central 
portion elevated into an obtuse angular ridge of denser tissue, and having 
a polished surface; other portions of the crown and the lateral margins 
roughened by a vermicular pitted or corrugated marking; the lower surface 
rough and bone-like. 
We have in these teeth another of the many phases of the dentition of 
the fishes of which the food consisted of crustaceans or mollusks with more 
or less resistant shells. Undoubtedly a large number of ancient as well as 
modern fishes were vegetable feeders, and it is possible that some of what 
are called crushing teeth may have been employed for triturating vegetable 
tissues; but the sea-weeds, which must have composed the food of herbiv- 
orous fishes, were soft and succulent in character, and no more powerful 
organs were required for the management of this kind of material than such 
as would suffice to tear off fragments of the tender fronds, and these, like 
the other food of fishes, must have been swallowed without mastication. 
Nor are we to suppose that the powerful pavement teeth of the ancient 
carnivorous fishes were ever used to masticate food after the manner in 
