424 The History of Ichthyology 



are not more glaring and numerous. Upon the purely scien- 

 tific side, however, one must confess that the " Poissons Fossiles " 

 is of minor importance for the reason that as time has gone by 

 it has been found to yield no generalizations of fundamental 

 value. The classification of fishes advocated by Agassiz, based 

 upon the nature of the scales, has been shown to be convenient 

 rather than morphological. This indeed Agassiz himself ap- 

 pears to realize in a letter written to Humboldt, but on the 

 other hand he regards his creation of the now discarded order 

 of Ganoids, which was based upon integumental characters, 

 as his most important contribution to the general study of 

 ichthyology. And although there passed through his hands 

 a series of forms more complete than has perhaps been seen 

 by any later ichthyologist,* a series which demonstrates the steps 

 in the evolution of the various families and even orders of fishes, 

 he is nowhere led to such important philosophical conclusions 

 as was, for example, his contemporary, Johannes Miiller. And 

 even to his last day, in spite of the light which palaeontology 

 must have given him, he denied strenuously the truth of the 

 doctrine of evolution, a result the more remarkable since he has 

 even given in graphic form the geological occurrence of the vari- 

 ous groups of fishes in a way which suggests closely a modem 

 phylogenetic table, and since at various times he has empha- 

 sized the dictum that the history of the individual is but the 

 epitomized history of the race. The latter statement, which 

 has been commonly attributed to Agassiz, is clearly of much 

 earUer origin; it was definitely formulated by von Baer and 

 Meckel, the former of whom even as early as 1834 pronounced 

 himself a distinct evolutionist. 



Second Period.— Systematic Study of Fossil Fishes. — On the 

 ground planted by Agassiz, many important works sprang 

 up within the next decades. In England a vigorous school 

 of palaeichthyologists was soon flourishing. Many papers 

 of Egerton date from this time, and the important work of 

 Owen on the structure of fossil teeth and the often-quoted 

 papers of Huxley in the ''British Fossil Remains." Among 

 other workers may be mentioned James Powrie, author of a 

 number of papers upon Scottish Devonian fossils; the enthu- 



* Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward excepted. 



