BOTHRIOLEPIS HYDROPlliLA. 127 



that " the number of legs are limited to two in every one of the specimens in my 

 possession, amounting to impressions of twenty animals." The following year 

 (1841) saw the publication of Hugh Miller's 'Old Red Sandstone,' 1 in which 

 classic work the talented author rather scoffed at Dr. Anderson's " beetle," and 

 even went so far as strongly to hint that the figure was purposely made up 

 so as to make the creature look more insect-like. But the good clergyman, however 

 slender his acquaintance with zoology might be, was not guilty of wilful pictorial 

 misrepresentation ; his figure is not bad, and no present-day palasichthyologist 

 could be in doubt as to the affinities of the animal it was meant to represent. 

 In the same place Hugh Miller mentions that Agassiz had pronounced it to be a 

 Pterichthys, an opinion with which he cordially agreed. And as " Pterichthys hydro- 

 philus " the figures of the species given in Table IV of the " Atlas " to the ' Poissons 

 Fossiles du vieux Gres rouge' (1844) are designated, though in the letterpress and 

 in the case of the restored figure in Table IV the generic name Pamphractus is 

 adopted, of which new genus the main distinctive characters were " le developpeinent 

 excessif de la plaque centrale de la" carapace, qui atteint 1' articulation de la tete, 

 l'absence d'nn ceinture thoracique faisant le tour du corps ; et la demarcation 

 distincte de l'articulation occipitale " (text, p. 20). But, as shown in 1848 by Sir 

 Philip Egerton and Hugh Miller, Agassiz, having all along mistaken the ventral 

 for the dorsal surface of Pterichthys, might well find a difference between that and 

 the real dorsal surface of the Dura Den fossil, which in his restored figure (op. cit., 

 pi. vi, fig. 2) is quite recognisable as dorsal in spite of errors of detail. For, 

 of course, the so-called "plaque centrale," with its " developpement excessif," and 

 attaining the articulation of the head, is the anterior median dorsal, and the 

 occipital articulation only appears on the dorsal aspect of the fish. The genus 

 Pamphractus was, therefore, abolished by Egerton and Miller, and the species 

 hydrophilus restored to Pterichthys. More than this, Hugh Miller in the same 

 paper also decided that the drawing received from Fleming, and on which Agassiz 

 founded his " Homothorax Flemingii" represented "the under surface of the 

 Pamphractus drawn from a rather imperfect specimen of Pterichthys hydrophilus, 

 which did not indicate the divisions of the plates." There can be no doubt that 

 this is a correct interpretation of the figure of this supposed additional genus from 

 Dura Den given by Agassiz on pi. xxxi, fig. 6, of his 'Poissons Fossiles du vieux 

 Gres rouge.' 



That the Dura Den Asterolepid belonged to a genus different from Ptenchthys 

 was, nevertheless, perfectly true, though the reasons for separating it given by 

 Agassiz did not hold. For when, in 1888, I looked into the question of the 

 structure and classification of the Asterolepidse I found that Pterichthys hydrophilus, 

 ephalus, Egerton, must certainly follow j 

 The Old Red Sandstone,' ed. 1, 1841, pp. 173-174. 



I'.) 



