428 



NATURE 



{March 4, 1880 



will be remembered that shortly after Mr. McCarthy's and Capt. 

 Gill's journeys into Burinah, Mr. Cameron performed the same 

 feat and was very anxi >us to return to Yunnan by the same 

 route, Bein<* forbidden, however, to do so by the Indian Govern- 

 ment he went, by way of Rangoon and Singapore, to the newly- 

 opened port of Pakhoi, in the extreme south of China. From 

 this place he made a long journey in the interior, going through 

 parts of the provinces of Kwangtung, Kwangsi, Kweichow, and 

 Yunnan, in fact, across the whole south of China Proper, and 

 visiting places where Europeans had never teen seen before. 

 Since accomplishing that arduous undertaking, Mr. Cameron has 

 made another long journey through parts of the provinces of 

 Kwangtung Kiangsi, Fokhien, and Chekiang. In a remote part 

 of the first-named province, near Shao-chow-fu, he noticed a 

 novel method of transporting stones from a hill-top to the river- 

 side. A zigzag path was made down the hill-side, hollowed in 

 the centre ; on it a loaded sledge was placed and set in motion, 

 the path being kept slippery by water poured on it by a man 

 who appeared to have no other occupation. Nearer the border 

 of the province the country people had a peculiar mode of pre- 

 paring the ground for rice, in that they made straight rows and 

 then crossed them, using a rake-like instrument with wheels 

 instead of teeth. In the east of the Kiangsi province Mr. 

 Cameron mentions finding the tea-plant growing wild on the 

 mountain sides, and forming with other shrubs a fine cover for 

 game. 



At the annual meeting of the Russian Geographical Society 

 the great gold medal was not awarded ; the gold medal of Count 

 LiitUewas awarded to Prof. Inostrantseff, for hi< geological work 

 on the district of Povyenets (government Olonets). Small gold 

 medals were awarded to M. Zolotr.itsky, for the compilation of a 

 dictionary of the Chouvasbes language and researches into this 

 language ; to M. Orloff, for statistical works on the Government 

 of Moscow ; to General Stubendorf, for his continuous works in 

 geography : to M. Kouropatkin, for his work on " Kashgaria ; " 

 M. Moshkoff, for the levelling in Siberia; M. Pyevtsoff, for hi, 

 paper on Jungaria ; and to M. Polyakoff, for his researches 

 into the stone period in Russia. Silver medals were awarded in 

 great number : — to M. Tikhonravoff, for his works during the 

 Anthropological Exhibition at Moscow ; MM. Lipin and 

 Port evitcb, for work done during the exploration of the Obi 

 and Yenissei watershed ; M. Petrussevitch, for the exploration 

 of the Amu River; M. Matussovsky, for his description of the 

 highways in Western Mongolia ; M. Yanovsky, for meteoro- 

 logical observations on the Askold Island ; M. Listoff, for 

 researches into the freezing of the Ketz salt lake; MM. 

 Gellmann, Polouyanovsky, Stoulchinsky, and Petrovsky, for 

 the levelling in Siberia ; and to several others for ethno- 

 graphical and statistical works. 



In the December number of the Paris Geographical Society's 

 Bulletin, M. De Ujfalvy gives a pretty full account of Kulja, 

 apropos of the existing trouble between Russia and China as to 

 its possession. M. J. Barraude concludes his translation of 

 the long Russian paper on the Amu and Uzbu; and M. de 

 Bizemont brings together the meteorological observations of 

 Abbe Desgodins, on the meteorology of Tibet. M. Jametel 

 escribes the various routes from Jungaria to Tibet, after Chinee 

 documents ; and M. A. Lomonosof gives the itinerary from 

 Tatta-Kasar to Plerat, followed by Col. Srodekof in 187S. 



HISTORY OF RESEARCH AMONG THE 

 FOSSIL FISHES OF SCOTLAND^- 



A LTHOUGII works containing notices of fossil fishes had 

 ■*"*■ appeared on the Continent as early as the fifteenth century, 

 the earliest work descriptive of their occurrence in Scotland was 

 Ure's "History of Rutherglen and East Kilbride," which was 

 published in 1793, in which, among other Carboniferous fossils, 

 several relics of the fishes of that epoch were figured. These 

 are mostly the teeth of Srfachii, or sharks, but one of them is a 

 portion of the mandible of the gigantic ganoid fish now known 

 as Rhisedus Hibberti. It was not, however, until the end of the 

 third and commencement of the fourth decades of the present 

 century that the pakeichthyological treasures of the country began 

 to attract any real attention. 



In the year 1827 Sedgwick and Murchison, who had been 

 exploring the sedimentary rocks of the north of Scotland, 



extracts from an Address given to the Royal Physical Society 

 of Edinburgh, by Ramsay H. Traquair, M.D. 



despatched to Cuvier, for his opinion, a number of fossil fishes 

 which they had found in the dark schists of Caithness ; and they 

 sent other specimens to Valenciennes ,and Pentland. In 1828 

 they communicated to the Geological Society of London a paper 

 "On the Structure and Relations of the Deposits contained 

 between the Primary Rocks and the Oolitic Series in the North 

 of Scotland," in which they founded the genus Dipterus, giving 

 excellent figures of four supposed species. Cuvier's opinion was 

 to the effect that these fishes were allied to the Lepidostais, or 

 bony pike of North America, and belonged, like it, to his divi- 

 sion of Malacoptcrygii abdominales. The genus Osteolepis was 

 also mentioned on the authority of Valencieanes and Pentland, 

 with a figure of what is apparently a plate of Coccosteus, but 

 which the authors at the time considered as having belonged to a 

 " tortoise nearly allied to Trionyx." 



In 1S27 Fleming had also obtained from the Upper Old Red 

 Sandstone of Fife.shire certain organic remains, of which in the 

 same year he published a preliminary notice in a local newspaper. 

 These were, in fact, the scales of the fish, which afterwards 

 received the now well known name of Holoptychius. 



A year afterwards, scales and plates of fishes were found in 

 the upper "Old Red" of Clashbennie, in Perthshire, and were 

 by some at first considered to be oyster shells ! But Fleming, at 

 once perceiving their real nature, prepared a short notice, " On 

 the Occurrence of the Scales of Vertebrated Animals in the Old 

 Red Sandstone of Fifeshire," which he read before the Wernerian 

 Society of Edinburgh in May, 1830. 



Immediately after these beginnings were being made in open- 

 ing out the rich storehouse of ancient fish-life contained in the 

 Scottish Old Red Sandstone strata, the equally interesting trea- 

 sures of the Carboniferous rocks in the neighbourhood of Edin- 

 burgh had begun to attract notice. The greatest possible interest 

 was excited among Edinburgh naturalists by Hibbert's discovery 

 of the fo.-siliferous nature of the limestone of Burdiehouse, a 

 member of the Lower Carboniferous series, and the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh co-operated energetically with that gentleman in 

 securing a large collection of the animal remains which it con- 

 tained. These comprised not only entire specimens of numerous 

 small fishes, bat also large detached spines and scales, and, above 

 all, enormous conical teeth, some of which attained a length 0' 

 3! inches, and a width of I J inch at the base. 



In the year 1S33 the first livraison of Agassiz's " Recherches 

 sur les Poissons fossiles'' was given to the world. Already a 

 goodly array o c Continental writers had published account 

 figures of fossil fishes from various strata. Of these may be 

 mentioned : Mylius, Knorr and Walchner, Wolfart, Scheuchzer, 

 Volta, Bronn, Cuvier, and De Blainville ; and a few also i:i 

 England, such as Lhwyd, Mantell, and Sowerby had made 

 observations upon similar fossils which had come under their 

 notice. Large collections, both public and private, had also been 

 formed. But as yet no satisfactory basis had been found for the 

 comparison of fossil with living forms, and the vast treasures 

 which were to be added to our knowledge of the succession of 

 ichthyic life on the globe were, it may be said, as yet entirely 

 unknown. It was reserved for Agassiz to lay the first secure 

 foundations for this knowledge, and to become, as he is so often 

 and so worthily styled, the father of fossil ichthyology. 



Upon the studies to which he now directed his attention, and 

 which were so largely to contribute to his world-wide reputation, 

 Agassiz brought to bear the indispensable qualifications of an 

 intimate acquaintance with recent ichthyology as well as with 

 zoology and comparative anatomy in general. And in pursuing 

 his investigations into the ichthyology of bygone age-, he soon 

 became aware that no satisfactory place could be found in the 

 Cuvierian system of classification for an extensive array of extinct 

 fishes, which prevailed especially during the great paleozoic 

 and secondary epochs. They bore affinity both to the sturgeon, 

 classed by Cuvier among the Pistes cartilaginei, and to the 

 American Lepidosteus and African Polyplerus, whose place was 

 then considered to be in the Malacoptery ian or soft-finned 

 division of the Pisces ossci. The point in their configuration, by 

 which Agassiz was more especially struck, was their possession 

 of strong, bony, and usually glistening scales, the list-mentioned 

 peculiarity suggesting the term "ganoid," as expressive of their 

 distinctive aspect. The study of these ancient " enamelled - 

 scaled " fishes seems to have formed the spring to the conception 

 of his new classification of fishes, according to their scales, into 

 the four orders of Ganoidei, Hacoidti, Ctentddei, and Cyclmdei. 

 Working on the basis of this classification, he commenced the 

 publication of his great work, and had already, as he tells us, 

 become acquainted with ! ix hundred species of fossil fishes, when 



