52 



Fishes. 



however, I saw enough to exhilirate and interest ; I wrought on till the advancing tide 

 came splashing over the nodules, and a powerful August sun had risen towards the 

 middle sky ; and were I to sum up all my happier hours, the hour would not be for- 

 gotten in which I sat down on a rounded boulder of granite, by the edge of the sea, 

 when the last bed was covered, and spread out on the beach before me the spoils of 

 the morning.'' — p. 139. 



Although our readers may perhaps think that these extracts have 

 ah-eady extended to an unreasonable length, we cannot resist the 

 temptation of laying before them the description and figure of a fish, 

 still more strange, still more unlike the ordinary figure of a fish, than 

 either of those hitherto enumerated. The genus Cephalaspis appears 

 to be numerous both in species and individuals, but somewhat re- 

 stricted in its geological range. It is the animal already noticed, 

 whose body possesses a pictorial resemblance to that of a trilobite. 

 With the author's description of this most anomalous animal our no- 

 tice of 'The Old Red Sandstone' must close. We heartily commend 

 the work and the subject to all lovers of nature ; it appears to us an 

 ample field for research — a field in which it is impossible to wander 

 without the opportunity at least being afforded of reaping an abun- 

 dant harvest, 



" Has the reader ever seen a saddler's cutting-knife? — a tool with a crescent-shaped 

 blade, and the handle fixed transversely in the centre of its concave side. In general 



outline the Cephalaspis resembled this tool, — the 

 crescent-shaped blade representing the head, — 

 the transverse handle the body. We have but 

 to give the handle an angular instead of a round- 

 ed shape, and to press together the pointed horns 

 of the crescent till they incline towards each 

 other, and the convex or sharpened edge is elon. 

 gated into a semiellipse, cut in the line of its 

 shortest diameter, in order to produce the com- 

 plete form of the Cephalaspis. The head, com- 

 pared with the body, was of great size, comprising 

 fully one-third the creature's entire length. In 

 the centre, and placed closely together, as in 

 many of the flat fish, were the eyes. Some of the 

 specimens show two dorsals, and an anal and cau- 

 dal fin. The thin and angular body presents a 

 jointed appearance, somewhat like that of a lob- 

 ster or trilobite. Like the bodies of most of the 

 ichthyolites of the system, it was covered with 

 variously-formed scales of bone ; the creature's 

 head was cased in strong plates of the same ma- 

 Cephaiasvis Lyeiiii. terial, the whole upper side lying under one huge 



Imcklcr, — and hence the name Cephalaspis^ or buckler-head. In proportion to its 



