DEVONIC FISHES OF THE NEW YORK FORMATIONS lOI 



at the Cincinnati meeting, in 1851, where it was examined by Professor 

 Louis Agassiz.' Newberry, in 1862, mentions having seen a cast of the 

 same, but states that the original itself had disappeared/ However, it still 

 remained in existence, and was finally acquired by the University of Mis- 

 souri. In 1891 it was redescribed by Cope,^ most fortunately for science, 

 since only a few months after its return to Missouri it was destroyed by fire 

 together with the entire contents of the museum to which it belonged. 



The same year that Norwood and Owen described the type species, 

 Hermann von Meyer"* published a few notes on the fossil fishes from the 

 Eifel Devonic, one of which received the name of Placothorax agas- 

 sizi. This was soon afterwards figured and described by the same 

 author,^ but it was reserved for Newberry, in 1857, to point out its identity 

 with Macropetalichthys.* Von Meyer's specimen was entirely denuded of 

 its superficial ornamentation, a circumstance which prevented him, as he 

 tells us, from associating with it a second specimen which he described 

 under the name of Physichthys hoeninghausii;'' nevertheless he 

 conceded that they might possibly prove to be identical. He also pointed 

 out that fragments of the same nature and from the same locality as these 

 had been described by Agassiz under the title of Asterolepis hoen- 

 inghausii. Von Meyer's type specimens of "Physichthys" afterwards 

 passed into the possession of Dr L. Schultze, from whom they were pur- 

 chased in 1 87 1 by the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, 

 Mass. Here they were examined by Dr A. Smith Woodward, who was 

 the first to demonstrate the true nature of "Physichthys."* A second 

 European species was brought to light in 1880, and named M. prue- 



'Am. Ass'n Adv. Sci. Proc. 1851. 5: 179. 



^ Am. Jour. Sci. [2] 1862. 34: 76; U. S. Geol. Sur. Monogr. 1889. 16: 27. 



3 U-. S. Nat. Mus, Proc. 1891. 14:449-56. 



4 Neues Jahrb. fiir Min. 1846. p. 596-97. 



5 Palaeontographica 1847. i: 102-4, pi. 12, fig. i. 

 « Nat. Inst. Bui. 1857. p. 119. 



7 Palaeontographica 1855. 4: 80-83, pl- ^S. fig- ^S- 



8 Geol. Mag. [3] 1890. 7:459; also Cat. Foss. Fishes Brit. Mus. 1891. pt 2, p. 303. 



