OF THE EARLIER GANOIDS. 325 



great, the Society may see how ranch more elegant its out. 

 line is in the actual fossil than in the restoration. This kev- 

 stone-shaped plate, which rested immediately under the pineal 

 one, I picked up at nearly the same tirae with the other. It 

 enables me to complete the external surface of the cranial 

 buckler of this great ganoid, with all its unique but not un- 

 graceful tatooings. Of the little wedge-shaped plate I may 

 be permitted to relate a brief anecdote, illustrative of the 

 quickness of eye possessed by one of our most distinguished 

 geologists. Professor Sedgwick. It was wanting in the speci- 

 men from which I had figured the inner surface of the cra- 

 nial buckler of Asterolepis in my "Foot-prints ;" and, as at that 

 time I had not seen the plate, instead of venturing to re- 

 store it, I simply left vacant in the figure the space in which 

 it had lain. The gap struck the eye of the Professor as un- 

 natural : it was not the proper finish, he said ; and when in 

 autumn last he visited my collection, accompanied by Sir Ro- 

 derick Murchison and Dr John Fleming, he brought the vo- 

 lume with him in his pocket, to compare the print with the 

 original. Ere his visit, however, I had procured, through 

 the kindness of Mr Dick, a specimen in which the keystone- 

 like plate occupied its proper place in the gap, presenting its 

 inner side ; and I referred him to it, as a better illustration 

 than the print of how nature had given the last finish to the 

 cranial buckler of the Asterolepis. " Ay," he exclaimed, as 

 he eagerly knelt down to examine the specimen, and passed 

 his fingers over the keystone-like plate, " Ay, this is a finish 

 of the right kind; — this will do." There are several rare 

 and a few unique fossils on the table illustrative of various 

 points in the structure of the first ganoids, to which I can 

 only refer the members of the Society generally as worthy of 

 their examination. They are in part the fruits of a leisure 

 fortnight spent this autumn among the rocks of Thurso ; but 

 in still greater part I owe them to the kindness of my inde. 



