3<J4 Proceedings of the Wernerian Society. 



sident of the Society, also by Dr Fleming, Dr Hibbert, Lord 

 Gi-eenock, and others, were daily extending our acquaintance 

 with the fossil corals, shells, and fishes of this interesting forma- 

 tion. In regard to the fossil fishes and coprolitcs in the lime- 

 stone, slate, and ironstone, of the middle region of Scotland, 

 it was remarked, that, in several districts on both sides of the 

 Forth, they were met with in considerable abundance, where 

 they were first pointed out by the President of the Society, and 

 afterwards, in some new localities, by Walter Calverly Trevel- 

 yan, Esq., Lord Greenock, Dr Hibbert, and Thomas Jameson 

 Torrie, Esq. Professor Jameson mentioned some beds in the 

 coal formation so thickly studded with coprolites, that they might 

 be named coproliie beds ; while others abounded so much with 

 fish scales, that they might not unaptly be called scale beds ; and 

 further, that the coprolites were not confined to the Jem lime- 

 stones, but were met with also, although hitherto not so abun- 

 dantly, in the coral and shell limestones of the coal formation ; 

 and that hitherto no remains of undoubted fossil saurian animals 

 had been met with in Scotland ; the large crocodile- like teeth dis- 

 covered in the coal formation by the late Rev. D. Ure, and fi- 

 gured by him in his History of Rutherglcn and Kilbride, and 

 since, in 1834, by Dr Hibbert, at Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh, 

 belonging probably to an extinct tribe of fishes. The sauroidal 

 character of sonU; of these fossils has elicited the following re- 

 marks from Professor Agassiz : — 



" It is in the series of deposits inferior to the Lias that we be- 

 gin to find the largest of those monstrous Satvroid fishes, whosu 

 osteology reminds us in many respects of the skeletons of saurian 

 animals, viz. by the closer sutures of the bones of the head, by 

 the large longitutlinally striped conical teeth, and by the manner 

 in which the spinous epiphyses are articulated with the bodies 

 of tlie vertebrae, and the sides at the extremity of the transverse 

 epiphysfes. The analogy which exists between these fishes and 

 saurian animals, is not confined to the skeleton alone ; for in one 

 of the two recent genera I have found a very peculiar internal 

 organization of the soft parts, which renders the similarity greater 

 than it at first appeared. There is, in fact, in the Lepidx)steus 

 osseiis, a glottis like that of the sirens and the salamandrian 

 reptiles, a cellular swimming-bladder, with a trachea, like the 

 lung of an ophidian. Finally, their integuments have often an 



