136 Reviews — A. Smith Woodward — 



they have scarcely changed during subsequent epochs. A few, 

 however, discovered only in the Cretaceous rocks, are of especial 

 interest as exhibiting the precocious development of a character, 

 namely the pelvic fins near to the pectoral arch, which was never 

 permanently acquired by fishes with so primitive a skull, but soon 

 became the common feature of the spiny-finned or acanthopterygian 

 families." These aberrant forms have another interest for geologists 

 who have made the Chalk their special study. These precocious 

 herrings, if we may so call them, are none other than the characteristic 

 fishes of the Chalk, which we have all along known as Beryx, or 

 rather it is that portion of them left to us after Dr. Smith Woodward 

 had, about twelve years ago, removed some of the species to the 

 genus Hoplopteryx. But now we learn that our supposed Cretaceous 

 representatives of the deep-sea Beryx are little more than common 

 herrings, and do not even belong to the family of the Berycidae ; 

 they have been renamed Ctenothrissus, and placed in a new family, the 

 Ctenothrissidse. Beryx, it is said, is not certainly known as a fossil. 

 The Chalk without Beryx is almost like " Hamlet " without the 

 central figure. Much as we may regret this change of names, we 

 must, even while smarting under the correction, appreciate the 

 acumen which has detected the form of the lowly herring under 

 the guise of the highly specialized Beryx, and be thankful for the 

 elimination of a fundamental error. 



Dr. Smith Woodward says that these Ctenothrissidse are essentially 

 Clupeoids with the pelvic fins displaced forwards and situated nearly 

 under the pectorals. If this be so it is a remarkable fact, and not 

 a little difficult to understand why these should have become extinct, 

 while other fishes, which underwent a similar modification during 

 the Cretaceous era, have retained it until the present day and have 

 become a predominant race. 



The true family of the Clupeidse does not seem to be represented 

 in British Cretaceous rocks, although occurring in deposits of that 

 age in other parts of the world ; it is especially abundant in the 

 Upper Cretaceous beds of the eastern Mediterranean. In Tertiary 

 times, however, these fishes were certainly living in the British 

 area and had an almost worldwide distribution. 



The Decertidge, those remarkable elongated fishes with longitudinal 

 rows of paired scutes with which we are familiar in the English 

 Chalk, are known only from beds of that age, but had then a wide 

 distribution. " They are interesting as being the earliest type of 

 fish in which evidence of a distensible stomach has been observed." 



The well-known Enchodus and its allies, which are exclusively 

 Cretaceous fishes, are variously specialized by the development 

 of large teeth and dermal scutes. The author thinks that this 

 family may have furnished the ancestors not only of the Berycidas 

 but also of the Scopelida9. 



The family Esocidse, with its only genus ^sox, is also included in 

 the suborder Isospondyli ; it is sparsely represented in later Tertiary 

 beds, and fragments of fishes, which cannot be distinguished from the 

 common pike, Esox lucius, are met with in Pleistocene deposits. 



