MEANING OF JAGUAR AND LEOPARD ROSETTES 119 



that the Leathery Turtle should exhibit the identical bone-rosettes 

 of the Glyptodon. They are no doubt very much thinner, as if 

 they may be either forming or disappearing ; nevertheless, no one 

 can doubt that they are the same things, and are produced by the 

 same cause, whatever that may be. It is also noteworthy that 

 two of the Turtle rosettes show a tendency to approximation and 

 partial fusion, like those of Fig. 6y. This community of features 

 points to the probability of the Glyptodonts having emerged from 

 some Turtle-like water-animal. 



«^ 00 ^ " 



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Fig. 69. — (a) Group of ornament tubercles on head-shield ai Encephalaspis Paget (Prof. 

 E. R. Lankester's Monograph of the Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of Britain, p. 49). The 

 scales have the same character of markings ; (h) ornament in polygonal plates tuberculated of 

 Hemicyclaspis Murchisoni, p. 52; [c] Portion of test or shell of Echinus gracilis {Zoology of 

 the Invertebrata, by A. E. Shipley p. 241). 



Then the Nile Crocodile and the Sturgeon show in their armour 

 forms of plating similar to the imprints of the Jaguar, as seen in 

 Fig. 68 {b) and (c). 



Lower and lower still in the scale of life we meet with the same 

 curious pattern in its more primitive form, viz., that of a central larger 

 plate surrounded by a ring of smaller plates or tubercles. I would 

 not venture to suggest that the spotting of the Cheetah has any 

 relationship with the plates on the test of the Echinus, or with those 

 of armoured fishes ; for, if I did, I might be laughed at, and there- 

 fore I simply give the markings on these animals in Fig. 69 so that 

 the reader may judge for himself 



