PISHES. 491 



skeletons are never met with in this locality. They occur in all 

 attitudes. The substance in which these remains are found is 

 a coppery and marly schistus, bituminous, strewed with argen- 

 tiferous pyrites, and sometimes mercury in the state of cinnabar. 

 This strata occurs under limestone containing Belemnites, En- 

 trochi, and Ammonites. The remains are numerous, but not 

 of any great variety of species, of the genera Palceoniscum, 

 Palceothrissum, Clupea, Esox, and Stromateus of Blainville. 



Ichthyolites or fossil fishes occur in the compact limestone 

 of France and Italy. In the former country at Granmont, 

 four leagues from Beaune in Burgundy, two species have been 

 found, which M. Blainville names Elops macropterus, and 

 Esoat incognitus ; and others in Italy at Pietra Roya. In 

 the chalk formations, Ichthyolites have been met with at Brussels, 

 Maestricht, and Paris. The remains at Brussels belong, be- 

 sides teeth, to the genera Pleuronectes and Squalus. In the 

 calcareous formations below the gypsum in the quarries near 

 Paris, a species of Labrus has been found ; and in the marine 

 limestone above the gypsum, isolated vertebrae, teeth, operculi, 

 and spines. In the well known locality of Pappenheim, in the 

 quarries near Aichstedt, many remains of fish have been observ- 

 ed in the calcareous fissile strata of that district. These quar- 

 ries have been worked for slates ; and the remains appear 

 in relief, or impressed on the surface of the plates. Species of 

 the genus Clupea, Esox, Stromateus, and Poecilia^ have been 

 found in these quarries, along with remains of Crustacea. 



The most celebrated locality for remains of fossil fishes, and 

 which has furnished the greatest quantity to collections, is the 

 basin of the Mediterranean, and particularly at Monte Bolca, 

 or Vestena Nuova, on the confines of the Veronese territory, 

 and the Vicentine. The mountain of Vestena Nuova is volca- 

 nic, and rises 1000 feet above the limestone. It is composed 

 of two species of stones ; the first, named in the country il Zen- 

 gio, is a very hard marl, forming thick beds, but which contains 

 no organic remains ; the second, called il Lastra, is a fissile fe- 

 tid marl, which splits easily into laminae, in which the fossil re- 

 mains are discovered in a bed of two feet in thickness. This 

 stone is almost entirely calcareous, with a little clay, and mixed 

 with a bituminous substance. The Ichthyolites consist of ske- 

 letons, sometimes in very perfect preservation, fragments of bones, 



