124 Reviews — Fossil Fishes in British Museum. 



IR, IE V I IE W S. 



I. — Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum 



(Natural History). By Arthur Smith Woodward, F.G.S., 



F.Z.S. Part III. 1895. 8vo, pp. xxxii and 544, with 18 Plates 



and 45 Illustrations in the text. Dulau & Co., London. 



ri^HE appearance of the third part of Mr. Smith Woodward's 



J Catalogue of the Fossil Fishes in the British Museum will he 



welcome, not only to those who have occasion to busy themselves 



with the determination of genera and species, but to all who are 



interested in the classification of fishes in general, and in the 



fascinating problems connected with the evolution of this great 



class of Vertebrata. The time is surely now come for " biologists " 



to give some attention to palaeontological as well as to embryolugical 



development, instead of looking upon fossil forms, as only too many 



seem to do, as something altogether outside the sphere of their 



work and interest. 



This part, dealing mainly with the fishes ordinarily known as the 

 " Lepidosteoid Ganoids," has taken four years in preparation ; not 

 too long a time when we consider the magnitude of the task of 

 revising and rectifying such an enormous mass of genera and 

 species, but also of tracing the true and natural affinities of forms 

 and families, whose relationships have been in the past so obscured 

 by the lingering influence of Agassiz, which has induced, and still 

 induces, authors to place undue value upon characters of absolutely 

 secondary importance, instead of boldly assigning the proper weight 

 to those which are of a more deeply seated and genuinely morpho- 

 logical nature. 



While much had been done by previous writers in the way of 

 freeing Palaeozoic Ichthyology from the -'dermal character" incubus, 

 Mr. Smith Woodward has had the work of elucidating the true 

 morphological relations of the Mesozoic Semi-heterocercal Ganoids 

 very much more to himself, for it cannot be said that recent 

 attempts to systematize these fishes have been very successful. And 

 the result is one of which neither the author nor the great national 

 institution of which he is a prominent official need be ashamed. 



The present part commences with the consideration of certain 

 Mesozoic representatives of the Acipenseroidei, or, as the author 

 prefers to call them, " Chondrostei," left over from last volume. 

 Here, as previously indicated, Mr. Woodward includes the semi- 

 heterocercal Catopterus and the abbreviate diphycercal Belono- 

 rhjnchus, placing more weight upon the structure of the median 

 fins than on the degree and manner of the caudal extension of 

 the body-axis. The families treated of here are the Catopteridaj, 

 Belonorhynchidse, Chondrosteida?, Acipenseridae, and Polyodontidse. 

 Although Prof, von Zittel still " does not seem to see it," at least 

 with the requisite clearness, it is gratifying to find that Mr. 

 Woodward does not cease to support strongly the close relationship 

 between the recent Acipenseroids and the extinct Palseoniscidse and 

 Platysoinidas, which was pointed out by the present writer in 1877. 





