President's Address, 151 



shield of a Dipterus, and we find chronicled his discovery of 

 the dentition of Dipterus, which, with the structure of the 

 palatal aspect of the skull, here also beautifully figured, after- 

 wards proved of such importance in determining the affinity 

 of that genus to the recent Dipnoi. Many important original 

 observations and figures are here also given regarding the 

 cranial osteology of Osteolepis and Diplopterus, as well as of 

 the gigantic Asterolepis, though, misled by Agassiz, he did 

 not recognise the affinity of the latter genus to Coccosteus, 

 though he described one of its median dorsal plates as 

 " hyoid," and though he also attributed to it the scales, teeth, 

 and jaws of a large Gl^/ptolepis, a fish belonging to a totally 

 different family. The work was, however, mainly written as 

 a counterblast to the well-known publication, the " Vestiges 

 of Creation," and is almost entirely occupied with a fierce 

 denunciation of the doctrine of Evolution. Bitter and impas- 

 sioned indeed are the words with which the volume concludes. 

 The doctrine of Evolution was at that time, however, still in 

 its crude Lamarckian stage. What would poor Hugh Miller 

 have thought, we may imagine, had he lived to the present 

 day when the genius of Darwin has given to the theory of 

 Descent an entirely new impulse and aspect, and has totally 

 revolutionised all our ideas as to zoological classification and 

 morphology ! 



We may now pass to the consideration of what was done 

 by Professor M'Coy while engaged in naming and describing 

 the palaeozoic fossils of the Woodwardian Museum at Cam- 

 bridge, among which were a considerable number of Scottish 

 fossil fish-remains, principally from the Old Eed Flags of 

 Orkney. Professor M'Coy's work among these, published in 

 the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History" for 1848, is 

 more of a systematic than anatomical character; he assidu- 

 ously set himself to work in naming and describing genera 

 and species, but it is greatly to be feared that the enormous 

 field over which his other palaeontological researches extended 

 had not afforded him the time and opportunity to acquire the 

 necessary experience in deciphering fish-remains, without 

 which the liability to error is not only natural but imminent. 

 He did not seem, for instance, to realise the extreme caution 



