PART V 



RESEARCHES AND DISCUSSIONS TO CONNECT, MORE 

 SURELY, ARMOUR-PLATING WITH SKIN-PICTURING 



Is there any tangible evidence to prove that skin-spotting is 

 often the result of ancestral armour-plating ? 



To answer this question we have to take a wider view of 

 vertebrate animals. 



There is a great number of existing animals, which now have 

 only a partial and scattered armour, evidently a mere vestige of 

 a more complete and closer fitting ancestral armour. 



The partial or complete disappearance of the bony plates of 

 the exoskeleton, from whatever cause, not unfrequently leaves spots 

 or other marks on the skin, in their stead, as records, so to speak, 

 of what had gone before. 



I shall give only a few instances from fishes, which can be seen 

 in the Natural History Museum and in other records. 



A Ray-fish with a whip tail, labelled Urogymnus asperrimics, has 

 a broad carapace, from head to tail, studded with closely-set plates 

 of two sizes, viz., large stellar and spinose plates, encircled by minute 

 tubercular platelets, the tail being wholly encased in similar plates. 



Then an allied Ray -fish (a sting ray) from the Australian waters, 

 Trygon tuberculata, has only scattered spinose plates on its head 

 and sides, and a complete spinal line of similar plates, running into 

 the tail, which is also covered with spinose plates. 



Of another allied species, also froni the Australian waters. 



