90 Mr. T. Stock on the ‘“Kammplatten” or 
X.—On some British Specimens of the “‘ Kammplatien” 
or * Kammleisten” of Professor Fritsch, By THOMAS 
Stock, Natural-History Department, Museum of Science 
and Art, Edinburgh*. 
[Plate VI. ] 
Proressor Fritscu of Prague, in his ‘ Fauna der Gaskohle 
und der Kalksteine der Permformation Béhmens’ (Prague, 
1880), describes} and figuresf, in connexion with Ophiderpe- 
ton, certain peculiar comb-like plates which he calls “ Kamm- 
platten” or “ Kammleisten.” The evidence of the association 
seems tolerably complete ; for in fig. 1, pl. xx. (op. cit.), two 
detached plates are drawn beneath a group of the “ Stiibchen ”’ 
or scutes which defended the ventral region of the animal’s 
body, and in fig. 5, pl. xx., a series of these plates is repre- 
sented lying upon a well-preserved fragment of the creature. 
The series (?a double series), of which an enlarged draw- 
ing is given in fig. 6 (oc. cit.), consists of six elements, 
closely approximated to each other, but receding gradually 
in size from the most externally situated to those lying most 
towards the interior. Several detached plates are figured, 
from which it is possible to obtain a correct idea of their general 
contour and of the different appearances presented as they are 
viewed on their concave or on their convex surfaces. They 
are usually, though apparently not in all cases, pectinated along 
one edge of their more expanded portions; and their handles 
are in all cases, in the specimens figured, more or less bent 
inwards and directed towards the pectinated edges. They 
are ganoid externally, and therefore exoskeletal and probably 
dermal appendages. As to their origin, Prof. Fritsch suggests 
that they are perhaps modified ossicles of the ventral armour ; 
and as to their function, that they “ wahrscheinlich in der 
Kloakengegend als Hilfsorgane bei der Paarung dienten.” 
These curious bodies do not appear to have been preserved 
in the specimens upon which Prof. Huxley founded the 
genus§, Mr. T. P. Barkas, F.G.S., however, in a letter to 
the ‘Geological Magazine’ for January 1869, drew attention 
to and gave woodcut figures of two forms from the shale over- 
lying the Low-Main coal-seam of the Northumbrian Coal- 
measures, which are certainly identifiable with Prof. Fritsch’s 
* Communicated by the Author, having been read before the Edinburgh 
Geological Society, May 1881. 
+ Band i. Heft 2, pp. 119-125. 
{ Plate xx. 
§ “On a Collection of Fossil Vertebrata from the Yarrow Colliery,” 
Trans. Roy. Irish Acad. vol. xxiv. 1867. 
