THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. II. 



No. IV.— APRIL, 1895. 



OIRXG-XISTJ^JI, .A.K,TIGXiES. 



I. — A Contribution to Knowledge of the Fossil Fish Fauna, 

 OF THE English Purbece Beds. 



By Arthur Smith "Woodward, F.L.S., F.G.S., 

 Of the British Museum (Natural History). 



(PLATE VII. Figs. 1-9.) 

 1. The Purbeckian Fishes or the Yale of Wardour, Wiltshire. 



SINCE the publication of the notes on some new fishes from the 

 English Purbeck and Wealden Beds five years ago,^ the Rev. 

 "W. R. Andrews, of Teffont, has kindly entrusted to the writer for 

 examination a fine series of Purbeckian fishes from the Yale of 

 Wardour. All the members of this fauna are remarkably diminutive, 

 compared with those met with in the corresponding formation in 

 Dorsetshire ; but nearly all the species are well preserved, and some 

 are sufiiciently novel to be worthy of detailed description. The 

 Pycnodont genus Ilesodon, which was first described from the English 

 Purbeck in the paper already cited, is here represented by one or two 

 more forms; the Lepidosteoid Ilaerosemius is now first definitely 

 recorded as a British fossil ; additional examples of Pleuropholis ex- 

 tend previous information of that genus ; new specimens of Leptolepis 

 Brocliei add to the known specific characters of this fish ; and the 

 opportunity is now afforded for publishing a figure of the small 

 Palseoniscid, Coccolepis Andrewsir 



Coccolepis Andrewsi, A. S. Woodward. Plate YII. Fig 1. 



1891. Coccolepis Andretvsi, A. S. "Woodward {ex E,. H. Traquair, MS.), Catal. 

 Foss. Fishes, Brit. Mus. pt. ii. p. 254. 



A small species attaining a length of about 0-06 m.; maximum depth 

 of trunk contained at least six times in the total length ; upper caudal 

 lobe excessively elongated and slender. Fin-rays with distant articu- 

 lations. Dorsal fin arising slightly in advance of the middle point of 

 the back, opposed to the hinder portion of the pelvic fins, as deep as 

 long, and its maximum depth not exceeding that of the trunk at its 

 point of origin ; anal fin scarcely deeper than long, about two-thirds 



1 A. S. "Woodward, "On some JSTew Fishes from the English "Wealden and 

 Purbeck Beds referable to the genera Oliqopletirus, StrohUodus, and Ilesodon,'" Proc 

 Zool. Soc. 1890, pp. 346-353, pis. xxviii., xxix. 



2 For a valuable account of the stratigraphy o^' the formations in which these fishes 

 occur, see W. E,. Andrews and A. J. Jukes-Browne, "The Purbeck Beds of the 

 Yale of "Wardour," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. 1. (1894), pp. 44-69. 



DECADE IV. — VOL. II. — NO. IV. 10 



