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the unexampled collections of fossil fishes in the museums of Lord 
Enniskillen and Sir P. Egerton, and in other cabinets in this country 
and on the Continent, Prof. Agassiz has now extended his total 
number of species of extinct fossil fishes to more than 1700, of which 
nearly 250 new species have been the fruits of his recent visit to 
Great Britain and Ireland. I have elsewhere spoken of the ines- 
timable value of the discoveries of Agassiz in the department of 
fossil ichthyology, not only in relation to geological investigations, 
but also to zoology and physiology. In his history of the rapid 
progress he has made within the last six years, it has been duly and 
gratefully acknowledged by him, that his now voluminous work, the 
‘ Poissons Fossiles, must at an early stage have ceased for lack of 
funds, without the liberal support it has received from a large list 
of subscribers in this country, and from pecuniary grants of the 
British Association. . 
In the necessary preparations for this large and costly work, M. 
Agassiz had accumulated in his portfolio a splendid collection of 
drawings, chiefly by Dinkel, not less beautiful as works of art, than 
precious as being the originals of the plates in his great scientific 
monument, the ‘ Poissons Fossiles;’ but, engaged as he is in a mul- 
titude of other costly and splendid scientific works, the Professor 
of Neufchatel was anxious to employ the capital thus locked up in 
his portfolio in a way more profitable to science, by causing it to 
fructify in the production of other publications. By a recent acci- 
dent this fact came to the knowledge of Lord Francis Egerton, who 
forthwith proposed to become the purchaser of this entire collec- 
tion of original drawings, about 1200 in number, permitting M. 
Agassiz to retain at Neufchatel the unpublished portion of them 
as long as may be convenient for the completion of his work. Such 
opportune and liberal interference to advance the progress of a 
work of pre-eminent scientific value is becoming of a nobleman long 
distinguished as a patron of Art, and whose conviction thus sub- 
stantially shown of the value of researches which are rendering 
such inestimable service to Science, evinces his Lordship’s worthi- 
ness of his position as President of the Geological Society at Man- 
chester *. 
FOSSIL CRUSTACEANS. GIGANTIC SPECIES OF EURYPTERUS. 
It will be in the recollection of those among us who have watched 
the progress of the recent rapid discoveries of fossil fishes in the old 
red sandstone, that at the Edinburgh Meeting of the British Asso- 
ciation (1834) a most anomalous fossil from the old red sandstone of 
Clashbinnie, in the county of Forfar, and considered by the disco- 
verer to be a fish resembling the Angel Fish, was rejected by Agassiz 
-from that class of animals; whilst neither he nor any other natu- 
* M. Agassiz has acknowledged in some of the leading scientific jour- 
pals of the Continent the liberality with which Lord Francis Egerton has 
thus come forward to facilitate the progress of researches, in which the sci- 
entific world is deeply interested. 
Die GZ 
a Fa) 
