CHAPTER IV. 
The Elfir-fish of Gawin Douglas. — The Fish of the Old Red Sand- 
stone scarcely less curious. — Place which they occupied indicated 
in the present Creation by a mere Gap.— Fish divided into two 
great Series, the Osseous and Cartilaginous. — Their distinctive 
Peculiarities. — Geological Illustration of Dr. Johnson’s shrewd 
Objection to the Theory of Soame Jenyns. — Proofs of the inter- 
mediate Character of the Ichthyolites of the Old Red Sandstone. 
— Appearances which first led the Writer to deem it intermediate. 
— Confirmation by Agassiz. — The Osteolepis. — Order to which this 
Ichthyolite belonged. — Description. — Dipterus. — Diplopterus. — 
Cheirolepis. — Glyptolepis. 
Has the reader ever heard of the “ griesly fisch” and the 
*‘ Jaithlie flood,”’ described by that minstrel Bishop of Dunkeld 
“who gave rude Scotland Virgil’s page?” Both fish and 
flood are the extravagances of a poet’s dream. The flood 
came rolling through a wilderness of bogs and quagmires, 
under banks ‘dark as rocks the whilk the sey upcast.” A 
skeleton forest stretched around, doddered and leafless; and 
through the “ unblomit” and “ barrant ” trees 
‘‘The quhissling wind blew mony bitter blast ; ” 
the whitened branches “ clashed and clattered;” the * vile 
water rinnand o’erheid,” and “ routing as thonder,” made “hid. 
eous trubil;” and to augment the uproar, the “ griesly fisch,” 
like the fish of eastern story, raised their heads amid the foam, 
and shrieked and yelled as they passed. ‘ The grim monsters 
fordeafit the heiring with their schouts ;*” — they were both 
fish and elves, and strangely noisy in the latter capacity ; and 
the longer the poet listened, the more frightened he became. 
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