446 Mr. G. A. Boulenger o)i 



on some points the excellent descriptions given bj Profs. 

 Traquair and Fraipont. 



The most complete of the two specimens before me, which 

 T will designate as A, is well preserved, so far as the 

 body and fins are concerned, in slab and counter-slab; but 

 the head shows only roughly the general outline^ so that 

 nothing can be added to our previous very scanty knowledge 

 of the skull. 



The second specimen, B, of about the same size and also 

 exposed in two slabs, is much dislocated ; but tliis is all the 

 better, as it enables us to view the inner aspect of the scale?, 

 which was still unknown, and it shows remarkably well the 

 pectoral girdle. It also affords the first direct evidence of 

 the absence of ossifications round the notochord. 



It is difficult to conceive anything poorer, considering the 

 date of its publication, than Van Beneden's description and 

 figure in Bull. Acad. Belg. (2) xxxi. 1871, p. 512, pi. iv., 

 and, from the imperfection of the fossil on which it is based, 

 one cannot account for the remark, " On ne pourrait avoir un 

 poisson frais dans un plus bel ^tat de conservation." The 

 fish was referred to a genus the characters of which are very 

 different, and named " Palaeoniscus dc Dende." Neither in 

 the original description nor in the later published list of the 

 fossil fishes of Belgium (' Patria Belgica,' i. [1 878] p. 387) 

 was the name latinized, as stated by mistake in the British 

 Museum 'Catalogue of Fossil Fishes' (ii. p. 451). There- 

 fore, according to the current rules of nomenclature, the species 

 must bear as author's name that of Traquair, who described 

 and figured it in 1878 (De Koninck's FauneCalc. Carb. Belg. 

 i. p. l6, pi. ii.) as Benedemus deneensis, and again in his 

 Monograph of the Platysomidaj (Tr. R. Soc. Edinb. xxix. 

 1879, p. 354, pi. iii. fig. 17), correctly referring it to a new 

 genus in the immediate vicinity of Eurynotua. Yielding to 

 the suggestion of a reviewer in these ' Annals ' for 1880, that 

 the name Benedenius is preoccupied by the earlier Benedenia^ 

 Gray, Traquair himself in 1890 (Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. [6] 

 vi. p. 492) changed it to Benedenichthys^ a change which, in 

 my opinion, was unwarranted. 



The fish under consideration should therefore be called 

 Benedenius deneensis, Traquair. 



A supposed second species of the same genus, Benedenius 

 Soreili, was described and figured by Fraipont in 1890 (Ann. 

 Soc. G^ol. Belg. xvii. p. 211, pi. v.) in a paper to which my 

 attention has kindly been drawn by my friend Mr. Smith 

 Woodward. I must regard it as a synonym, the only distinc- 

 tive character of some importance residing in the shorter tail, 



