October i i, 1906] 



NA TURE 



599 



of the upper jaw (Enchodontidas). The pelvic fins in a 

 few fishes were now displaced forwards, so that their 

 supports even touched the bones bearing the pectoral fins 

 (Ctenothrissidae). Still more interesting, the bones of the 

 gill-cover began for the first time to develop spines 

 (linchodontidfe). 



Among fishes, as among other animals, spines charac- 

 terise only the latest representatives of the class. When 

 the slieleton is well ossified, races which have reached or 

 just passed their prime tend to acquire more skeletal 

 matter than they actually need, and the surplus is then 

 arranged as spines and bosses, usually in a symmetrical 

 .:ianncr. In the case of fishes, some of the fin-rays become 

 hardened, and spines arise chiefly on the cheeks and gill- 

 covers. The Acanthopterygii (" spine-finned ") are thus 

 the highest and latest fishes of all, though they sometimes 

 eventually descend from their high estate by degeneration. 

 They exhibit all the peculiar changes in the skull, upper 

 jaw, and pelvic fins noticed as first appearing in a variable 

 manner in the Cretaceous Isospondyli. They also differ 

 from all the earlier races of fishes in the common numerical 

 fi.\ity of their vertebra; and fin-rays. There are whole 

 families in which the number of vertebrse never varies, and 

 there are large genera in which all the species have the 

 same definite number of spinous fin-rays. 



The spiny-finned fishes began by Berycoids and possibly 

 Scombroids in the Chalk, closely resembling, but not 

 identical with, genera living at the present day. The so- 

 called Beryx of the Chalk (Hoplopteryx, Fig. 3, d) is now 

 proved to be very different from the existing genus bearing 

 that name. By the Eocene period, however, nearly all the 

 modern groups of .Aranthopterygii had become completely 

 separated and developed, and their sudden appearance is 

 as mysterious as that of the early Eocene Mammalia. 



The study of fossil fishes, as now pursued, is thus an 

 attempt to solve the following fundamental problems : — 



(i) The nature and order of the successive advances in 

 anatomical structure which have suddenly infused new life 

 into the class — the " expression points," as Cope termed 

 them. 



(2) The new possibilities of development which arose with 

 each successive " expression point." 



(3) The direction of the various abortive lines of advance 

 and degeneration in each successively higher grade. 



The results of such a study have an important bearing 

 on the most fundamental questions concerning " living " 

 matter as contrasted with "dead" matter; for, in my 

 opinion, we are much more likely to approach some explan- 

 ation of life by studying the secular development of whole 

 races than by examining the vital processes of individuals 

 or by comparing the members of a single contemporaneous 

 fauna. A. Smith Woodward. 



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NO. 1928. VOL. 74] 



