130 HIGH STANDING OP THE PLACOIDS. 



into two separate orders, the one lower and the other higher 

 than the members of the osseous line. And so far was he 

 from regarding the true placoids, — those CJwndropterygii 

 which to an internal skeleton of cartilage add external plates, 

 points, or spines of bone, — as low in the scale, that he ac- 

 tually raised them above iishes altogether, by erecting them 

 i nto an order of reptiles, — the order Amphibia Nantes. Surely, 

 if the name of Linnaeus was to be introduced into this con- 

 troversy at all, it ought to have been in connection with this 

 special fact ; seeing that the point to be determined in the 

 question under discussion is simply the place and standing of 

 that very order which the naturalist rated so high, — not the 

 place and standing of the order which he degraded. It so 

 happens that there is one of the Chondropterygii which, so 

 far from being a true placoid, does not possess a single osseous 

 plate, point, or spine : it is a worm-like creature, without eyes, 

 without moveable jaws, without vertebral joints, without scales, 

 always enveloped in slime, and greatly abhorred by our Scotch 

 boatmen of the Moray Frith, who hold that it burrows, like 

 the grave-worm, in the decaying bodies of the dead. And 

 this creature, " the glutinous hag," or, according to north- 

 country fishermen, the " ramper-eel," or " poison-ramper,'' 

 was regarded by Linnaeus as belonging, not to the class of 

 fishes, but to the vermes. Now, this is the special fact with 

 which, in the development controversy, the author of the 

 " Vestiges" connects the name of the Swedish naturalist ! 

 All the fish of the Silurian system belonged to that true pla- 

 coid order which Linnaeus, impressed by its high standing, 

 erected into an order, not of worms, but of reptiles. He ele- 

 vated A, the true placoid, while he degraded B, the glutinous 

 hag. But it was necessary to the argument of the author of 

 the " Vestiges" that the earliest existing fish should be repre- 

 sented as fish low in the scale ; and so he has cited the name 

 and authority of T innseus in its bearing against the glutinoiis 



