( 814 ) 



Notice of the Remains of a Fishjbund connected zcitJi a Bed of 

 Coed at Claclanannan. In a Letter to Professor Jameson. 

 (With a Plate ) 



My Dear Sir, 



Agreeably to your request, I have sent you the accompa- 

 nying sketches of an Ichthyolite which was found a few years 

 ago in the course of the mining operations of the Devon Iron 

 Company, and in the neighbourhood of their works. Its pre- 

 servation is owing to the considerate attention of Mr James 

 Wilson junior, the mining-engineer of the estabhshment, who 

 obligingly presented the specimen to me. From the same in- 

 telligent c bscrver, may be confidently expected other valuable 

 contributions to a knowledge of the organic remains to be found 

 in the Clackmannan coal-field. 



When this organism was first exhibited to me, I was at no 

 loss to recognise the resemblance between the plates or scales 

 with which it was invested, and which occur in natural juxta- 

 position, and objects of a similar form and structure, though 

 detached, or unconnected, which, twenty years before, I had 

 procured in the county of Fife, from a bed, covering tlie Ma- 

 rine or Mountain Limestone on which the coal-formation of that 

 district rests as its fundamental rock. As the consideration of 

 the form, structure, and composition of the organisms from Fife 

 had induced me to consider them as tlie scales of a Jish, I was 

 led, under the influence of this opinion, and observing the scales 

 of the Clackmannan petrifaction occupying both sides of the 

 specimen, to seek for traces of the appearance of the vertebral 

 column, and I soon satisfied myself as to the indications of its 

 existence at both extremities of the mass. In this conviction, I 

 despatched the example to Edinburgh, with directions to the la- 

 pidary for making a section confirmatory of the views of its 

 nature which I entertained. When in the hands of the lapidary, 

 it was inspected by several members of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh, whose zeal in the study of organic remains had re- 

 ceived a fresh impulse from the numerous specimens which had 

 been found in the limestone of Burdiehouse. In the opinion of 

 more than one member of the Society, labouring at the time 

 under saurian or sauroid prejudices, my specimen was pro- 

 nounced to be the fragment of a reptile, not of a fish. 



