202 Dr Hibbert on the Limestone of Burdiehouse, 



nection. In fact this labour is only in progress. The Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh have transmitted to M. Agassiz as many 

 of the specimens from the collection as he wished to examine, 

 in order to be illustrated in his work ; and it is to be hoped that 

 more important relics will still turn up during the process of 

 quarrying. The details, therefore, of which this memoir must 

 necessarily be deficient, will no doubt be in the course of time 

 supplied. 



From another source, however, M. Agassiz has obtained 

 most important information relative to the sauroid fish of Bur- 

 diehouse. After leaving Edinburgh in company with Dr Buck- 

 land, these gentlemen visited many of the public museums of 

 Great Britain, among which was that of Leeds, where they found 

 the specimen of an entire head of a fossil animal, obtained from 

 the coal-fields of Yorkshire, which, from the teeth and other 

 bones, was ultimately referred to the same undescribed genus of 

 sauroid fish. 



Having obtained access to this great prize, M. Agassiz was 

 then enabled, with advantage, to compare the imperfect relics of 

 Burdiehouse, first, with the entire head from the Leeds Mu- 

 seum ; and, secondly, with a large specimen of the recent Lepi- 

 dosteus Spatula, preserved in the British Museum. 



After M. Agassiz had, by these various comparisons, esta- 

 blished the fact, that the teeth, and certain other osseous remains 

 of Burdiehouse, belonged to a sauroid fish rather than to a sau- 

 roid reptile, he considered it as a new genus to which he gave 

 the name of Megalichthys ; and to the species found at Bur- 

 diehouse (the first which he had seen), he added the name of 

 Megalichthys Hibberti. 



NOTES TO SECTION X. 



Under ordinary circumstances, I might have declined the honour thus rendered 

 me. If I have accepted it, the following reasons may be assigned : 



M. Agassiz had expressed some little apprehension for any pain which he might 

 inflict in setting me right upon a question regarding which I had publicly expressed 



