THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 145 



of fossil-leaf to plants of three different genera, which a 

 subsequent observer maintained to be merely the separated 

 portions of a single leaf of one and the same plant l . 



In the slates and limestones of Torquay, full as they 

 are of marine fossils, no fish-remains have been identified, 

 with one exception. Yet these rocks have been searched 

 by numerous sharp eyes and clever hands, professional 

 as well as amateur, with regular investigation, and in 

 the sometimes more successful trifling of idle moments. 

 It is worthy of note that the one exception is no 

 scarcely decipherable relic, the nature of which might 

 remain an open question, but a beautiful and finely- 

 preserved scale of pJiyllolepls concentricus 2 . Had there 

 been only one fish in the ' Devonian' waters of the neigh- 

 bourhood, the one fish must have had more than one 

 scale ; yet none of the others are forthcoming. The 

 science of to-morrow may find them ; to the science of 

 to-day they are lost irrecoverably. 



The still-living varieties of the oyster are a miserable 

 remnant of the 255 fossil species from the chalk 

 described in Coquand's recent work. Professor Flower, 

 in reviewing this monograph, remarks, that ' with these 

 mollusks, numerous as they are, there are no forms that 

 can fairly be recognized as transitional.' But inasmuch 

 as the succession in time of these species is well-estab- 

 lished by the different zones of the chalk in which they 

 are found, we must either accept some nine or ten suc- 

 cessive creations concerned in the production of oysters, 



1 Address to the British Association, 1868, p. 66 of the Report. 



2 In the Collection of W. Pengelly, Esq., F.R.S. 



