146 THE BANK ACCOUNTANT. 



traced. In both fishes the scales were ridged longi- 

 tudinally, but in the toothed one these ridges are 

 so much more strongly marked that, when examined 

 through a glass, each scale resembles a little bunch of 

 thorns. Pardon me, honoured sir, that I am thus minute 

 in describing these differences to you, who observe better 

 than any one else, and can make a better use of what 

 you observe. I have not succeeded in convincing some 

 of our northern geologists that we have two varieties 

 of small scaled fish in our beds, and I am now appealing 

 to you as our common judge, and thus showing the 

 grounds of my appeal. Besides, as I cannot send you 

 my specimens by hundreds, I deem it best, though it 

 may seem presumptuous in one so unskilled, to send 

 you in this way the result of my examinations of the 

 whole. One single specimen sometimes furnishes a 

 characteristic trait regarding which perhaps fifty illus- 

 trative of the same fossil may be silent. Among all my 

 specimens of the fish with the spines, only one shows 

 me that the animal was marked by a lateral line. 



' The consistency of style, if I may so express myself, 

 which obtains among the fossil fish of these beds, is 

 highly interesting. In no single fish do I find two 

 styles of ornament, there is unity of character in every 

 scale, plate, and fin. In the large glossy-scaled variety, 

 for instance (Dipterus), the whole external covering of 

 the animal was marked by minute puncturings, so that 

 every scale and plate every ray of the tail and fins, 

 presents, when viewed through the glass, a sieve-like ap- 

 pearance. Another variety of large-scaled fish, ap- 

 parently of an entirely different family, has its distinct 

 and consistent style of ornament also. Each scale furn- 

 ishes a broad ground (faintly lined by concentric mark- 

 ings crossed by radiating ones) on which there are raised 



