1859.] EGEBTON — OLD BED FISHES. L29 



public in any of the works issued during the life of the author, nor 

 since his decease, although it would appear, from some allusions in 

 the course of the correspondence, that they were communicated 

 either in the form of lectures or in the columns of the ' Witness.' 

 The anatomical minutiae are so clearly and accurately described, 

 that it is due to the fame of their talented author, as well as advan- 

 tageous to paloeontological knowledge, that they should be commu- 

 nicated to the public. 



Letter dated March 25, 1848. 



" The gutta-percha impression you sent me must be that of a 

 portion of the under part of the head of a small Coccostens. I am 

 acquainted with the peculiarly marked lozenge-shaped plate, and 

 possess two specimens of it ; but both present their inner surfaces. 

 In the one specimen, an Orkney one, it is altogether detached, 

 occurring solitary on the stone ; in the other, from Cromarty, it is 

 associated with plates of Coccosteus, resting, though not in its proper 

 place, almost in contact with the plate which described the under 

 part of the orbit of the creature's eye, — a plate, by the way, not 

 given in Agassiz's restoration, though exhibited in some of his ren- 

 derings of specimens. The eyes of the Coccosteus were placed, not 



Fig. 1. — Portion of the Under Part of the Head of a small Coccosteus. 



under the transverse portions of the cruciform plate c, fig. L, but, 



as demonstrated by at Least l«" of inv Bpft flifnana , under the angular 



plates d, and. instead of being surrounded by a ring of small plates, 

 were nearly, ifnol altogether, encircled by curves scooped out of 

 t\\<> larger ones plate d, and the paddle-shaped plate which you 

 may find resting on (he former in the single figure of tab. v '. on 

 the lefl hand Bide, and on the righl hand side of fig. I of tab. 9. 



* Po > \ ii u\ ( ir. - Rouge. 



