in the Neighbourhood of Edinburgh. 203 



my sentiments. That the apprehension was an unfounded one, I knew but too welL 

 by an appeal to the actual state of my own mind, which admitted no other feeling 

 except admiration for the great talent and discrimination which he had evinced. 

 Under these circumstances, I feared lest my refusal of the compliment which he 

 paid me might be interpreted by him as indicative of any lurking sentiment of im- 

 patience under the correction of a misconception, and, consequently, of an unfriendly 

 feeling to the cause of truth and of science. 



If I felt any degree of uneasiness whatever, it was in the reflection, that I had, 

 in two instances, been the sole cause of others partaking with me in the imperfect 

 view which I had entertained. In the first instance, I was hurt that the miscon- 

 ception had found its way in a work so replete with invaluable facts as that which 

 Mr Lyell has published ; and, in the second place, that I should equally have mis- 

 led another geologist, from whom the most brilliant discoveries in geological science 

 have emanated ; I allude to Dr Buckland. But I am convinced that these two in- 

 dividuals possess too enlarged minds not to make a generous allowance for any mis- 

 apprehension in the case of an animal, which appears, no less in organic structure 

 than in the date of its existence, to have been the very first connecting link between 

 fish and saurian reptiles. 



We are, in point of fact, only beginning to be aware, that, in an earlier period 

 of the history of our globe, certain of the largest animals of the waters were endowed 

 with the mixed organization of fish and reptile ; that in a later period of the globe, 

 pure reptiles have multiplied ; and that the attributes of too many fish and reptiles 

 have been hitherto confounded. M. Agassiz has already removed from the class 

 which had been assigned to them, several animals of preconceived reptilian character. 

 Caithness has lost a trionyx, which now proves to be a fish. The chalk of Sussex 

 has also lost another large reptile, which, in a similar manner, turns out to be a sau- 

 roid fish of a genus differing from that of Burdiehouse, and possessing a head, jaws, 

 and teeth as large as those of a crocodile ten feet long. " The teeth," M. Agassiz 

 writes to me, " are as large as those represented in Fig. 8. of Plate IX." 



In short, many saurian reptiles, which were supposed to have lorded it over lesser 

 tribes, have been dismissed from their administration ; while an interchange of repti- 

 lian and finny attributes has afforded the basis for forming a new natural history 

 cabinet. 



Such are the original views opened out to us by the recent discoveries of M. 

 Agassiz. 



Statements, however, have recently appeared in two consecutive foot-notes ap- 

 pended to the reports of the British Association of Science, and of the Royal So- 

 ciety of Edinburgh, (See the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for October 

 1834 and January 1835), that M. Agassiz's investigation was not only " confir- 

 matory " of Professor Jameson's previously expressed opinion upon the animal re- 

 mains of Burdiehouse, but that myself, as well as other geologists, (not even ex- 



c c 2 



