336 FOSSIL REPTILES. 



salamander is so striking ; and yet, he says, that he does not 

 doubt but that the fossil is a silurus, and that the head and 

 fins are distinguishable in the clearest manner. His editor, 

 M. Jaeger, has taken a very simple method of refuting this 

 opinion. At the side of the fossil, he has given a drawing of 

 the skeleton of a silurus glanis. M. Cuvier has done the 

 same, and placed the figure of that fish beside the fossil skele- 

 tons of Scheuchzer and Dr. Ammann. 



On the first glance of the eye it may be remarked, that, with 

 an equal size of head, the silurus would not be more than two 

 thirds of the length of the fossil skeleton of M. Ammann — 

 which, nevertheless, is not complete ; and that, within the same 

 space, where the spine of the silurus contains fifteen vertebrae, 

 that of the two fossil skeletons show but five or six. There is 

 no relation of form between the yet shorter vertebrae of the 

 rest of the spine of the silurus, and the vertebrae of greater 

 length than breadth in the fossils. The entire, too, of the 

 spine in the silurus consists of seventy vertebrae, while there 

 are but thirty or thirty- two in the much longer spine of the 

 fossil. 



The fossils present no vestige of the long spinous apophyses 

 of the tail of the silurus. It is by mere chance that in the 

 fossil there are bones of the extremity opposite to the place 

 where the ventral fins of the silurus are attached. But the 

 correspondence is illusory ; for, in the fossil, it is the anterior 

 extremity, and in the silurus, the posterior. The posterior 

 extremity of the fossil is very far behind, and opposite to the 

 very point where it is attached, the tail of the silurus is about 

 to terminate. The two extremities of the fossil present solid, 

 cylindrical bones, like those of the legs of quadrupeds and rep- 

 tiles, and not articulated or spiny radii like those of the fins of 

 fishes. The silurus exhibits nothing like the little ribs spread 

 on the two sides of the spine in the individual of M. Ammann. 

 Finally, if the head be compared, which, probably, has alto- 

 gether given rise to the supposition here combated, no resem- 



