160 PALAEONTOLOGY. 



structures — of the altered nature of the sediment surrounding 

 them, and its dependence on the admixture of the decomposing 

 and dissolved soft parts of the old fish — would deliberately 

 reject the conclusions which healthy human reason must, as 

 its Creator has constituted it, draw from such proofs of His 

 operations. These " irrationalists " try to make it be believed 

 that God had recently, and at once, called into being all these 

 phenomena ; that the fossil bones, scales, and teeth, had 

 never served their purpose — had never been recent — were 

 never truly developed, but were created fossil ; that the 

 creatures they simulate never actually existed ; that the 

 superior hardness of the inclosing matrix was equally due 

 to primary creation, not to any secondary cause. Like the 

 Manicheans, they refer the geological evidences of deposition, 

 superposition, stratification, petrifaction, and upheaval, equally 

 with the palseontological proofs, to the operations of a being 

 actuated by an elaborate design to deceive. 



Family V. — Pal^ioxiscidje. 



The Placoganoids, so richly represented in the Devonian 

 epoch, disappear in the carboniferous one ; the Lepidoganoids 

 increase in number. In- the present family they combine 

 with rhomboid scales, a hetero cereal tail, and jaws armed 

 with numerous, minute, close-set, rather blunt teeth. The 

 type-genus is Palwoniscus (fig. 70), species of which range 

 throughout the carboniferous and Permian beds : it is charac- 

 terized by moderate-sized fins, the dorsal, 7), being single, and 

 opposite the interval between the anal, J, and ventral, V, 

 fins : each fin has an anterior spine ; the fore-part of the head 

 is obtuse. In the Palceonisci from the coal formations at 

 Burclie House, near Edinburgh, the outer surface of the scales 

 is striate and punctate ; e. g., in P. ornatissimus, P. striatus ; 

 but in the Palceonisci of other British localities, and of the 



