FISHES. 247 



is a constant correspondence between the characters of the 

 scales and the internal organization of the fish. 



When the number of fishes now living and possessing scales 

 of these different forms, is compared with the number of those 

 which formerly existed, we find that species and genex-a, which 

 in countless multitudes swam in the ocean which then covered 

 our existing continents, have long since passed away. Those 

 whose vestments of enamel have bid defiance to the hand of 

 Time, exhibit, sculptured on their scales, ornaments of micro- 

 scopic beauty and diversified pattern. As an example of the 

 singular forms presented by some of these fossils, we shall 

 quote one brief paragraph, descriptive of some of the fossil 

 fishes of the Old Red Sandstone. 



" A stranger assemblage of forms has rarely been grouped 

 together; — creatures whose very type is lost — fantastic and 

 uncouth, and which puzzle the naturalist to assign them even 

 their class ; — boat-like animals, furnished with oars and a 

 rudder ; fish plated over like the Tortoise, above and below, 

 with a strong armour of bone, and furnished with but one 

 rudder-like fin ; other fish, less equivocal in their form, but 

 with the membranes of their fins thickly covered with scales ; 

 — creatures bristling over with thorns ; others glistening in an 

 enamelled coat, as if beautifully japanned — the tail, in every 

 instance among the less equivocal shapes — formed, not equally 

 as it is in existing fish, on each side the central vertebral bone, 

 but chiefly on the lower side, the bone sending out its dimin- 

 ished vertebra? to the extreme termination of the fin. All 

 the forms testify of a remote antiquit}^ — of a period whose 

 ' fashions have passed away.' The figm*es on a Chinese vase 

 or an Egyptian obelisk are scarcely more unlike what now 

 exist in nature than the fossils of the Lower Old Red Sand- 

 stone."* 



Note On the Ijiprovemext of Fisheries, and the Education of 



Fishermen. — In an economical point of view, Zoology could not be turned 

 to better account than in the right direction and promotion of the fisheries. 



* From a delightful and highfy instructive, volume, entitled, " The Old 

 Ked Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field," by Hugh Miller. The 

 first chapter tells us that the author was himself a working man, and 

 describes "the quarry in which he wrought." It was while labouring in 

 that humble vocation that his attention was first roused to the fossils of 

 the " Old Red Sandstone;" a formation with which his name is now indis- 

 solubly connected. 



