BY MRS MILLER. xlvil 



ganoids ; and if we take the immediate allies of Cephalaspia 

 and Pteraspis, — viz., Coccosteus and Pterichthys, — their ana- 

 logies with Siluroids, such as Bagrus and Doras, are as strong 

 as those with Accipenser (one of his six true ganoids). A 

 careful consideration of the facts, then, seems to me to prove 

 only the necessity of suspending one's judgment. That Ce- 

 phalaspis and Pteraspis are either ganoids or teleosteans ap- 

 pears certain ; but to which of these orders they belong there 

 is no evidence to show. If this evidence is valid, it is clear 

 that the ordinary assumption that the earliest fishes belonged 

 to low types of organization falls to the ground, whatever 

 may be the relative estimation in which the different orders 

 of fishes are held." — {Contribution by Professor Huxley to 

 the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for August 

 1858.) 



Professor Pander, again, as the reader will see by turning 

 to Note C, p. 309, wishes to erect the Cephalaspidse into 

 £. distinct family, and its nearest allies, the Pterichthys, 

 Coccosteus, &c. into another, to be entitled Placodermata. 

 From all this we learn, first, that the era of a classification 

 in this department perfectly satisfactory to naturalists has 

 not yet arrived ; but that, whatever their opinions on that 

 head may be, the earliest known fishes not only show no signs 

 of imperfection in their organization, but that the tokens of 

 a still higher organization than any displayed by the ganoids 

 of the third period of vertebrate existence, — those of the 

 Middle Old Red, where the author of the " Foot-prints," 

 according to the evidence of his day, supposed that ganoid 

 life had its beginning, — their nearer approach, in fact, to 

 the true bony fishes ^ the present day, — ^is precisely the 



