in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 201 



The impression produced upon my mind by the drawing was but faintly retain- 

 ed, until I visited the British Museum in London. Upon this occasion, an imper- 

 fect specimen of a large fish, with splendent scales, and form of head remarkably 

 gavial-like, immediately arrested my attention. After having taken several notes of 

 the external character of the animal, I added in my memorandum-book, " Thisjish I 

 must know.'''' In fact, my suspicion was so excited regarding the validity of my ex- 

 clusively saurian hypothesis, that after having been politely favoured by Mr Gray 

 of the British Museum, with a closer inspection than the highly suspended specimen 

 of the Lepidosteus would permit, of smaller examples of the animal, I came to 

 the conclusion that some of the large scales of Burdiehouse might have belonged to 

 a fish, — an opinion which I afterwards supported. And, most probably, I should have 

 dismissed every notion whatever which I had entertained in favour of an exclusively 

 saurian theory, if it had not been for the remarkable character of the fossil teeth, 

 which, after a consultation of the best works on comparative anatomy, I could not 

 reconcile with the attributes of a fish. 



It would be an easy matter for me to shew that I had not been solitary in my 

 judgment, as it was the same which had been expressed by some of the first natu- 

 ralists in London and Paris, to whom the teeth in question had been submitted. 

 Even M. Agassiz himself, when I accompanied him to the collection of Burdiehouse 

 specimens in the possession of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, with the view that 

 he might select any of them for drawing which might enrich his great work, was so 

 far inclined to countenance my opinion, that he rejected the teeth and many of the 

 large bones collected, as not being objects of his department, considering, like my- 

 self, that they had belonged to a reptile. 



It has been explained, however, that a single day had not passed over, before 

 M. Agassiz obtained the momentary sight of a jaw of the animal ; (for, as I have 

 stated, more than two jaws at the least had been found, which I had never myself 

 the opportunity afforded me to inspect) ; he then revoked his opinion, and pronounced 

 the animal to be a sauroid fish, rather than an exclusively saurian reptile. Upon this 

 occasion he begged me to accompany him to the College Museum, (my first visit there 

 for many years), where he pointed out to me a very small specimen of the same Le- 

 pidosteus which had so commanded my attention in London, to which he now re- 

 commended me to direct my particular views of comparison. 



SECTION X.— THE SAUROID REMAINS OF BURDIEHOUSE REFERRED TO A NEW 

 GENUS OF SAUROID FISH, THE MEGALICHTHYS. 



When M. Agassiz visited Edinburgh, he found the bones of 

 the large sauroid fish of Burdiehouse in so broken a state, among 

 which were fragments of the bones of other large and unknown 

 animals, that they almost defied any attempt of successful con- 



VOL. XIII. PART i. c c 



