Reviens — A. S. WoodivarcV s Catalogue of Fossil Fishes. 127 



hyomandibular is no sure evidence that it did not exist in a cartila- 

 ginous condition. An important discovery is that of basal elements 

 of a ventral fin in Coccosteus, which does not seem to have been 

 archipterygial, but abbreviate, and though this in the minds of 

 some would militate against these forms being classified with the 

 Dipnoi, it is in accordance with Mr. Woodward's theory of their 

 evolutional relationship to the Sirenoidei. It is satisfactory that 

 the author gives no countenance to Prof, von Koenen's idea that 

 a pectoral limb may yet be discovered in Coccosteus decipiens. 



Teleostomi — Crossopterygii. 



Mr. Woodward subdivides the Teleostomi into Crossopterygii and 

 Actinopterygii ; the former including the Rhipidopterygii of Cope, 

 the latter the Podopterygii of the same author. 



The Crossopterygii ai"e divided into Haplistia, "Rhipidistia, Actinis- 

 tia and Cladistia. The Plaplistia ai'e not however the Haplistia of 

 Cope, who established the order for the Dipnoan Phaneropleuron, 

 for instead of it we have the problematical Tarrasiidse, whose 

 relationship to the Crossopterygii I have myself indicated in a 

 recent paper, though I am far from believing that the question of 

 its position is in any way settled, and indeed Mr. Woodward only 

 places Tarrasiiis here provisionally. It certainly has an obtusely 

 lobate pectoral fin, which I had the pleasure of pointing out to 

 Mr. Woodward during a visit which he paid to Edinburgh in the 

 spring of last year. 



In the Ehipidistia Cope included only the Ehizodont genus 

 Tristichopteriis, which was thus removed from its own family, the 

 other members of which he joined with the Holoptychiidee and 

 Osteolepidae into another order, that of the Taxistia. Very properly 

 Mr. Woodward fuses those two orders, for which he adopts the name 

 Ehipidistia, containing the families Holoptychiidse, Ehizodontidee, 

 Osteolepidge and Onychodontidse. This is indeed a natural group, 

 for though the Holoptychii differ in some salient points from the 

 other families here associated with them, they are also bound to 

 them by obvious points of similarity which cannot be overlooked. 

 Mr. Woodward adopts the view which I have so repeatedly main- 

 tained, that the Dendrodonts and Holoptychians ai'e one and the 

 same thing ; but he does not clearly express the difi'erence between 

 the Dendrodont and Ehizodont type of tooth structure. Also when 

 he says that in the Ehizodontidte the vertical infoldings of the walls 

 of the teeth are " comparatively few and simple," and in the Osteo- 

 lepidas only slightly infolded at the base, surely he cannot have 

 examined sections of the base of the teeth in the larger genera of 

 both families, such as Eliizodus or Megalichthys, in which, simple 

 though the folds may be at the commencement of the external 

 fluting, as they pass down to the root of the tooth they assume a 

 comjilexity which, especially in Eliizodus, is absolutely wonderful 

 as well as beautiful, though the vertical tubes formed by this in- 

 folding never form an interlacing network as in the Dendrodont 

 type. 



