On the Fredaceous Habits of the Larger Falceoniscidce. 129 



the large Liassic ccelacanth, Holophagus gido, "has the 

 stomach distended with a recently -swallowed Fapedius" 

 which circumstance seems to have suggested the very ex- 

 pressive name given to the fish by Sir Philip Grey-Egerton.* 

 Nor do the very formidable spines with which the fins of 

 fishes of the genus Acanthodes were armed, seem to have 

 formed any efficient obstacle to their being swallowed and 

 digested ; indeed, Acanthodes seems to have formed rather a 

 common article of food with some of the larger Falceoniscidce ; 

 for Acanthodian spines may be very frequently detected 

 lying in the abdominal cavities of large specimens of Fhab- 

 dolepis — a Palaeoniscid genus common in the ironstone no- 

 dules of Saarbriicken and Lebach in Ehenish Prussia. 



Of the larger Palseoniscidse of our Scottish Lower Carboni- 

 ferous strata, none would seem to be better adapted for a life 

 of the kind usually termed " predaceous " than Nematopty chins 

 Greenochii. Its slender body, covered with comparatively 

 small scales, and its large fins, bespeak a rapid swimmer, 

 while its powerful jaws, armed with formidable incurved 

 conical teeth, and, above all, its enormous extent of gape, 

 would enable it to capture and swallow with ease other fishes 

 of a very considerable size, including also those strongly- 

 spined Acanthodians, which I have already mentioned as 

 frequently forming the prey of the Lower Permian Rhahdo- 

 lepis. 



I have, in my recent paper on the Fishes of the Edinburgh- 

 shire and Linlithgowshire Oil Shales, mentioned a specimen 

 of Nematoptychius Greenochii from Oakbank, in whose ab- 

 domen distinct remains of an Acanthodes are to be found. 

 And I have just lately obtained from the blackband ironstone 

 of Borough Lee, near Dryden (Middle Carboniferous Lime- 

 stone series), an example of the same species, which affords 

 a still better instance of the same phenomenon. In its ab- 

 domen there may be seen, lying over the region of the 

 ventral fins, first, the slender styliform bone of an Acanthodes, 

 variously considered by different authors as belonging to the 

 mandible or to the hyoid apparatus ; then, proceeding from 

 behind forwards, we find the two pectoral spines each \\ 



* Dec. Geol. Survey, x., 1861, p. 19. 

 VOL. V. I 



