THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 62. FEBRUARY 1863. 



X. — Observations on some of the Fossil Fishes of Dura Den. 

 By Robert Walker*. 



[Plate IL] 



The following obsen^ations upon the Fossil Fishes of Dura Den 

 are mainly based upon the examination of the large and valuable 

 collection contained in the museum, for which we are much in- 

 debted to Mr. and Mrs. Dalgleish, on whose property they are 

 found. I have endeavoured to make a careful examination of 

 their external structure, with a view to determine some points 

 regarding their generic and specific characters, which seemed to 

 me to require further elucidation. 



Before entering on this subject, it may be necessary to say a 

 few words about some of the previous writings on this depart- 

 ment of palaeontology. The scales of Holoptychius were first 

 described by the late Dr. Fleming, in 'Cheek's Edinburgh 

 Journal,' 1831, as the scales of some "vertebrated animal, 

 probably those of a fish f they had been found, a year or two 

 before, in the yellow sandstones of Drumdryan, about a mile to 

 the west of Dura Den, by Dr.Fleming. A few years afterwards, 

 entire specimens of Holoptychius, Phaneropleuron, Pterichthys, 

 and some other fishes were found in the sandstones of Dura Den, 

 and some of these were for the first time brought into notice by 

 Dr. Anderson in his Geological Essay in ' Fife Illustrated.' It 

 was not, however, till some of these fishes were submitted to the 

 scrutiny of Agassiz that anything like correct generic and specific 

 characters were assigned to them. These, with figures, were 

 first published in the ' Poissons Fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge,' the 

 Holoptychii under the specific names oiAndersoni and Flemingii. 



* Communicated by the Author, having been read to the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society, St. Andrews. 



Ann. !^ Mag, N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol.xu 6 



