THE OLD RED SANDSTONE SYSTEM. 



689 



magnitude of the fish. One specimen, which measured two feet four inches by one foot, 

 was found at Clashbinnie, near Perth, by the Rev. James Noble, and called Nobilissimus, 

 after the discoverer. The organs of locomotion, the tail and fins, are well developed. 

 The characteristic features are, the small size of the head in proportion to the body, and 

 the far removal of the h'ns towards the tail. This fish occurs in Scotland and in Russia, 

 in the upper part of the old red sandstone system the quartzose conglomerate 

 which is highly fossiliferous in those countries, while in England and Wales it presents 

 but few organic remains. 



Osteolepis. However an unscientific eye might fail to recognise the preceding forms 

 as belonging to the class of fishes, the most rustic mind would immediately identify this 

 genus with the ordinary inhabitants of the waters. The generic name bony-scale 

 belonging to the days of Cuvier, was first given to the fossil fishes of Caithness, and has 

 been continued, though subsequent discovery has shown that the same descriptive title 

 would apply equally as well to fishes of other families. The particular kind, thus 

 indicated, exhibits the form of a perfect fish, with pectoral, abdominal, and caudal fins, 

 the bony scales being arranged side by side like so many bricks in a wall. The tail 

 was heterocercal, the vertebral column running on nearly to the extremity of the caudal 

 fin. The length of the fish varies from under six inches to somewhat more than a foot. 

 Equally recognisable is another family of fishes, the Dipterus, or double winged, first 

 brought into notice by Mr. Murchison and Professor Sedgwick. This fish chiefly differs 

 from the former in the fins being opposite each other, instead of alternating. 



Such are some of the forms which the ichthyology of the old red sandstone system 

 comprises. During its -formation which necessitates a large draught upon time to 

 account for the accumulation of strata ten thousand feet thick the only dry land con- 

 sisted of the older granites, with a portion of the stratified systems formed from their dis- 

 integration mere islands, in a vast oceanic expanse ; and the waters appear to have 

 been in very discordant circumstances calm as the unrippled lake, when the finely 

 laminated tilestones of England were laid down, and swept by powerful currents while 

 the quartzose conglomerates were depositing. The evidence is obscure as to the exist- 

 ence of life on land, for all the vegetable remains discovered may be referred to forests of 

 algse clothing the bottom of the sea ; but the proof is ample of the ocean having abounded 

 with organic life, as much so as now that its vast armies of herrings appear along our 

 coasts. " I have seen," says the authority already quoted, the best that can be cited, 

 whose graphic chronicle of the phenomena of the system is beyond all praise, " I have 

 seen the ichthyolite beds as thickly covered with oblong spindle-shaped nodules, as I 

 have ever seen a fishing-bank covered with herrings ; and have ascertained that every 

 individual nodule had its nucleus of animal matter that it was a stone coffin in minia- 

 ture, holding enclosed its organic mass of bitumen or bone its winged, or enamelled, or 

 thorn-covered ichthyolite." These beds, involving an area of many thousand square 

 miles, now form a vast mausoleum, containing the remains of countless swarms of ocean- 

 dwellers, which once, gay with life, sported in the waters ; and, what is most remarkable, 

 these myriads appear to have perished by violence at the same moment, and in a calm 

 sea! Their contorted frames their tails in many instances twisted towards the head 

 their spines stuck out, and fins spread to the full their arms, in the case of the Pterich- 

 thys, stretched abroad at their acutest angle attitudes proclaiming alarm and pain . 

 point to some tremendous and instant catastrophe while their scales, retaining the 

 enamel, a fine edge, and only scattered as if by a ripple, point to the disaster occurring 

 when the tempest slept and the bosom of the deep was unagitated! Strange as this 

 appears, the history of oceanic and terrestrial life during the present epoch supplies pre- 

 cisely parallel examples. The " pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction 



