THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 163 
in teeth, various enough in their forms to indicate a corre- 
spon ling variety of families and genera among the ichthyolites 
to which they belonged. Some are nearly straight, like those 
of the Holoptychius of the Coal Measures ; some are bent, 
like the beak of a hawk or eagle, into a hook-form ; some 
incline first in one direction, and then in the opposite one, 
could be no other than oyster shells ; though eventually, on becoming 
acquainted with the decision of Professor Fleming regarding them, 
both gentlemen were content to alter their opinion, and to regard 
them as scales. The Professor, in his paper on the Old Red Sand- 
stone in Cheek’s Journal, referred incidentally to the oyster shells of 
Clashbennie—a somewhat delicate subject of allusion; and in Dr. 
Anderson’s paper on the same formation, which appeared about seven 
years after, in the New Journal of Professor Jameson, the geological 
world was told, for the first time, that Professor Fleming had de- 
scribed a scale of Clashbennie similar to those of Drumdryan, (i. e., 
those of the Holoptychius,) as bearing a “close resemblance to some 
of the scales on the common sturgeon,” and as probably referable to 
some “extinct species of the genus Accipenser.” Now, Professor 
Fleming, instead of stating that the scales were at all similar, had 
stated very pointedly that they were entirely different; and not only 
had he described them as different, but he had also figured them as dif- 
ferent, and had placed the figures side by side, that the difference 
might be the better seen. To the paper of the Professor, which con- 
tained this statement, and to which these figures were attached, Dr. 
Anderson referred, as “read before the Wernerian Society ;’’ — he 
quoted from it in the Professor’s words — he drew some of the more 
important facts of his own paper from it — in his late Essay on the 
Geology of Fife he has availed himself of it still more largely, though 
with no acknowledgment; it has constituted, in short, by far the 
most valuable of all his discoveries in connection with the Old Red 
Sandstone, and apparently the most minutely examined; and yet, so 
completely did he fail to detect Professor Fleming’s carefully drawn 
distinction between the scales of the Holoptychius and those of its con- 
temporary that when Agassiz, misled apparently by the Doctor’s own 
