568 Peach — On Fossil FlsJies. 



III. — On the Fossil Fishes of the Duchy of Cornwall/ 

 By C. W. Peach, A.L.S. 



IN 1841, at the meeting at Plymouth, I read a paper on the above 

 subject, and stated that I had found "portions of fishes at 

 Punch's Cross Quarry near Fowey." Again at Cork in 1843, I con- 

 tinued the subject, having met with far better specimens, and still 

 finer had been found by Mr. Couch, at Polperro ; these latter with 

 some of my own were there exhibited and commented on by me. — 

 From that time to 1849, I continued to extend my researches, and 

 met with fish-remains on both sides of the county. All these, I felt 

 satisfied, were portions of fishes, and in this opinion I was supported 

 by several eminent naturalists, especially by the late valued Professor 

 E. Forbes, Mr. Pengelly, and others. In 1849 I left Cornwall for 

 Scotland, and have not again been there. 



These things were considered fishes until 1855, when Professor 

 M'Coy (who had been some time before round Cornwall with Pro- 

 fessor Sedgwick) stated in the ''British Paleozoic Fossils," published 

 at Cambridge, after carefully examining some of the original spe- 

 cimens, and others that he had collected, that they were not Fishes, 

 but Sponges, of which he made out two species. So they have been 

 considered up to April of the present year, when Mr. E, Wyatt-Edgell, 

 in the Geological Magazine, for May, said, that the so-called Ste- 

 ganodictyum (Sponges) of M'Coy were true Fish-remains ; and in this 

 he is supported by Professor Huxley, Messrs. E. Pay Lankester, 

 Salter, and Woodward. I confess to feeling pleased at knowing, that, 

 although these interesting remains have been so long under a cloud, 

 light has at last broken upon them, and that their true history will 

 soon be told. Although I have bowed silently to authority so long, 

 my opinion as to their fish character has never changed : and in all 

 my wanderings over the Old Eed Sandstone of Caithness, and other 

 parts of Scotland, — with one exception, to be mentioned bye and 

 bye, — the only thing in all the fishes I met with, and these may be 

 told by hundreds, I never found one which agreed with the Cornish 

 ones ; however, a few decayed bones of Osteolepis, etc., showed the 

 same cancellated structure as the specimens from the Cornish rocks. 

 In May last I went on a visit to my son, who is in the Geological 

 Survey, at Lesmahagow, and amongst the Blackband Ironstone, in 

 one of the coalpits at Auchenheath, I got fish-remains showing 

 identically the same net- work cancellated structure. This peculiar 

 structure deceived morethan Professor M'Coy. Many named it to 

 me when talking about the Cornish fishes, because ''it differed so 

 widely from that of any known animal structure : " consequently they 

 refused to believe them fishes. Here let me do justice to Professor 

 M'Coy. He did not see the specimens on which I formed my opinion : 

 they were with me in Scotland, and were not sent to the Geological 

 Museum at Penzance until long after he had given his decision. 

 The exception above mentioned is a small tuberculated piece, one of 



1 Bead before tlie British Association (Section C.) Norwich, August, 1868. 



