THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER. 



NOVEMBER, 1863. 



ON THE "SERAPHIM" AND • ITS ALLIES. 



BY HENRY WOODWARD, F.Z.S. 

 (With a Tinted Plate.) 



Perhaps there is no class of people more happy in the choice of 

 names for natural objects than our quarrynien and pitmen. 

 Every collector of fossils has heard of the " Fairy -loaves " 

 (Ananchytes) and "Thunder-bolts" (Belemnites) , the "Files" 

 (spines of Oidaris), "Bird-tongues" (teeth of Lamna), and 

 " Slugs " (palatal teeth of Ptychodus, etc.); of "Devil's toe- 

 nails" (Gryphcea incurva), " Rams '-horns " (Ammonites), 

 "Screw-stones" (casts of Encrinite stems), " Dragon's-skin " 

 (Lepidodendron) , and " Cupid's-wing " (a form of iron pyrites); 

 possibly also of the " Seraphim," a fossil found in " the 

 Arbroath paving-stone " of Forfarshire, which from the wing- 

 like form of some parts of the shell, and the scale or feather- 

 like markings upon its surface, has given rise to this angelic 

 title among the natives. The fragmentary state in which this 

 curious fossil occurs, rendered its correct determination • a 

 matter of extreme difficulty. Professor Agassiz, who was the 

 first palaeontologist that undertook to solve this zoological 

 problem, writes* : — "The more I know of this creature, the 

 more I am tempted to believe that it was a fish; but how 

 absolutely decide upon it when we have neither head nor tail, 

 but only large wings ? It may provisionally bear the name of 

 Pterygotus problematicus, Ag. (wing-fish)." Fortunately, how- 

 ever, before the publication of his work on the Fishes of the 

 Old Red Sandstone (1844), Agassiz had an opportunity of 

 examining more perfect remains, collected by Mr. Webster in 

 the neighbourhood of Balruddery in Scotland, by which he was 

 enabled to learn that what he had at first conceived to be a 



* Murchison's Silurian System (1839, p. 606), "Plate IV., Figs. 4 and 5, 

 belong undoubtedly to the same animal as the Seraphim of the Old Red Sand- 

 stone ;" and Fig. 6, described as Sphagodus prislodontus, Ag., a new genus of 

 lishes, is now also known to be the serrated edge of the foot-jaw of a Seraphim. 

 VOL. IV. — NO. IV. R 



