44 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE, 
Mr. Murchison were forwarded to Agassiz. They were much 
more impeifect than some which I have since disinterred ; 
and to restore the entire animal from them would require 
powers such as those possessed by Cuvier in the past age, and 
by the naturalist of Neufchatel in the present. Broken as 
they were, however, Agassiz at once decided from them that 
the creature must have been a fish. 
I have placed one of the specimens before me. Imagine 
the figure of a man rudely drawn in black on a gray ground, 
the head cut off at the shoulders, the arms spread at full, as 
in the attitude of swimming, the body rather long than oth- 
erwise, and narrowing from the chest downwards, one of the 
legs cut away at the hip-joint, and the other, as if to preserve 
the balance, placed directly under the centre of the figure, 
agree in reading after the same manner the same scrap of manuscript, 
and in deriving the same piece of information from it. The writer 
experienced on this occasion a somewhat similar feeling. His speci- 
mens seemed written in a character. cramp enough to suggest 
those doubts regarding original meaning which lead to various read- 
ings; but the geologist and the naturalist agreed in perusing them 
after exactly the same fashion—the one in London, the other in 
Neufchatel. Such instances give confidence in the findings of sci- 
ence. The decision of Mr. Murchison I subjoin in his own words — 
his numbers refer to various specimens of Pterichthys: ‘* As to your 
fossils 1, 2, 3, we know nothing of them here, (London,) except that 
they remind me of the occipital fragments of some of the Caithness 
fishes. I do not conceive they can be referrible to any reptile; 
for, if not fishes, they more closely approach to crustaceans than to 
any other class. I conceive, however, that Agassiz will pronounce 
them to be fishes,” which, together with the curious genus Cephalaspis 
of the Old Red Sandstone, form the connecting links between crusta- 
ceans and fishes. Your specimens remind one in several respects of 
the Cephalasy is.” 
