96 ON THE STAGONOLEPIS ROBERTSONI AND THE 
The reptilian fossils from Elgin, which have passed through my 
hands, are of three kinds :—1st, Bones; 2nd, Natural casts of bones 
and teeth ; 3rd, Footprints. 
Of these, the first have been derived exclusively from the Lossie- 
mouth quarries; the second are almost wholly from Findrassie ; 
while the third class of remains is derived exclusively from Cum- 
mingstone. I am informed that up to the present time! no fossils 
referable to vertebrate animals have been found in either of these 
localities, save such as may with the highest probability be considered 
to belong to Stagonoleprs. 
Dermal Scutes of Stagonolepis (Pl. XIV. [Plate 6] figs. 1, 2, 3).— 
The first series of remains of which I purpose to speak are the dermal 
scutes and their casts. 
Of these there are two kinds: the one distinguished by their 
flattened outer and inner surfaces and nearly square shape ; the other, 
by having a bent or angulated contour arising from the possession of 
a longitudinal ridge externally, and of a correspondingly excavated 
inner surface. While the former, which, for distinction’s sake, may 
be termed the flat scutes, preserve pretty nearly the same dimensions, 
the latter, or angulated scutes, vary greatly in size, some being very 
much larger, and others as small as, or even smaller than, the flat 
scutes. 
The characteristic features of the flat scuces are best exhibited by 
the specimen upon which the genus was originally founded. It is 
very briefly described by Professor Agassiz, and is figured in pl. 31, 
figs. 13 and 14, of his already cited ‘Monographie. The specimen is 
an irregularly broken mass of sandstone, exhibiting numerous im- 
pressions of four-sided scutes, of which there are altogether five rows 
in one direction and eleven in the other. A plaster-cast (Pl. XIV. 
[Plate 6] fig. 1) shows, even better than the original, that, while one 
opposed pair, out of the four edges of each scute, fitted against the 
adjoining edges of the scutes on each side, the other pair of edges 
alternately overlapped, and were overlapped by, those of the adjacent 
scutes. There can be no doubt that the overlapped edges were an- 
terior, and, as I shall presently show that these scutes formed part of 
the ventral armour of the animal to which they belonged, the direction 
and relations of each row become at once definable. The five rows 
are longitudinal—the eleven transverse. None of these rows are 
complete. The left-hand longitudinal row contains five scutes, whose 
outer (left) edges are more or less broken away. The next row 
contains seven scutes, the posterior of which are somewhat thrust 
1 See the concluding Note to this paper, p. 117. 
