334 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [March 22, 



3. On Remains q/"FiSH in Flints. By Capt. Henry 

 Alexander, Royal Staff Corps. 



[In a letter to the Secretary of the Geological Society.] 



In the year 1850, being in Swaffham, ray friend Mr. Rose first called 

 my attention to the existence of fish-scales in flint. A lithographic 

 plate of scales, &c. was afterwards presented to me, which I found 

 to be correctly figured. This plate appears in the Annals of Natural 

 History (No. ix. 1838) ; and is one of two plates illustrating a 

 paper " On some new Organic Remains in the FUnt of Chalk," 

 by the Rev. J. B. Reade, F.R.S. At this period I was residing 

 at Diss in Norfolk, and understood that only solitary scales, teeth, 

 and fragments of bone had been discovered. Having mentioned 

 the circumstance to a friend, Mr. Amyot, also of that town, vre 

 commenced to examine very perseveringly the flints of that neigh- 

 bourhood, more particularly those collected from the fields and 

 placed in heaps by the sides of the roads. Many hundreds of these 

 flint-stones we broke, and at a rough calculation I consider that 

 about one in forty or fifty yielded fragments of fish, from one inch to 

 four, five, and six in length. These fragments consist of scales 

 (cycloid and ctenoid), teeth, fragments of the head, vertebrae, fins, 

 one tail, and various bones. I have found no specimen in which the 

 head or even a portion of it has remained attached to the vertebral 

 column. 



The tail above-mentioned is small, but perfect (homocercal), about 

 an inch in length. 1 have also found the right lower jaw of a fish or 

 reptile ; a drawdng of which, of the natural size, I enclose. Professor 

 Owen inclines to consider it as belonging to a fish. 



This letter accompanies a few specimens of the remams of fishes 

 in flint, which are for the acceptance of the Geological Society, if 

 considered worthy of its notice. 



The flints in which I have found the best of my specimens require 

 but a shght blow to break them. Whether this is owing to their 

 long exposure to the atmosphere, or that the flints of the Upper 

 Chalk, to which I presume these belong, are more easily fissured, or 

 from their having been broken up from their original bed, rolled here 

 and there, striking each other, and receiving numerous fractures 

 imperceptible to the naked eye, or from whatever cause, they most 

 certainly (the best of them for producing specimens) break the easiest, 

 and very often in the direction of the enclosed substance, which, 

 however, would be the case, if the hammer fell in the right direction, 

 and when that is the case, it is a fortmiate circumstance for the display 

 of the enclosed remains. The specimens require some little patience 

 in their examination ; the eye, in fact, requires a httle tutoring before 

 the many different objects in a good specimen are wholly displayed 

 to the sight. I possess some specimens that have taken me many 

 weeks before I have discovered th,at they contain minute teeth, small 

 but perfect vertebrae, scales of various forms and sizes, and some 

 with the lubricating tubes, &c. 



Ipswich, Suffolk, Feb. 24th, 1854. 



