President's Address. 377 



PISCES. 



During the last twenty years there has been great activity 

 in Scottish fossil Ichthyology. This is chiefly owing to the 

 great knowledge of the subject by our Secretary, Dr 

 Traquair, who imparts his own energy and enthusiasm to 

 collectors. During the period mentioned he has described 

 no less than 80 new species of fishes from the Palaeozoic 

 rocks of Scotland, 54 from the Carboniferous, 18 from the 

 Old Eed Sandstone, and 8 from the Silurian rocks. 



Prior to 1880, Dr Traquair had published his monograph 

 on the structure and affinities of the Palaeoniscidse,^ in which 

 he showed that the family was related to the Sturgeons, and 

 not to the Lepidosteidae. This is now accepted by most 

 writers on the subject. This was followed, in 1879, by his 

 memoir on the structure and affinities of the Platysomidse,^ 

 in which he showed that the Platysomidse are an offshoot 

 from the Palseoniscidse, and that they had nothing to do 

 with the Pycnodonts nor with the Dapediidse, the resem- 

 blance between them and those two families being due to 

 convergence phenomena alone. 



In 1880 he described the Lower Carboniferous Fishes of 

 Eskdale, from the Geological Survey collections, and showed 

 that nearly all the Ganoids belonged to new species, and that 

 many of the genera were also peculiar to the rocks of that 

 area. He described new genera of great interest, among 

 which are Fhaner osteon, Canohius, and Tarrasins.^ 



During the period he has described Cladodus JVeilsoni, a 

 shark with fins of great morphological interest, as well as a 

 specimen of a shark, Fsephodus magmcs, Agassiz, from the 

 Lower Carboniferous rocks of East Kilbride, showing a 

 mouth full of teeth, which had hitherto been assigned to 

 separate fishes, viz., P. magnus, Helodus planus, and Helodus 

 didymus, which were thus shown to belong to one and the 

 same fish. 



Dr Traquair has contributed largely to the knowledge of 

 the Asterolepidee and the Coccosteidse, as well as to the 



1 Palceontogr. Soc, 1877. ^ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxx., 1880. 



'^ Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxx. 

 VOL. XIV. 2 c 



