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OLD RED SANDSTONE OF WISTERN EUROPE. 359 
rendering a tribute of admiration to the skill with which they were pieced 
together by this pioneer in the geology of the north of Scotland. Had he lived 
he would doubtless have modified some of his inferences and withdrawn others; 
_ but even with these emendations, his paper will always remain a landmark in 
the literature of the subject, and raise a regret in its readers that he should 
_ have been cut off in the midst of such promise of ample and admirable geolo- 
logical work. 
Meanwhile other observers had been quietly gathering the strange and 
abundant fossil fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the north of Scotland. Dr 
“Traitt and Mr H. E. Srricktanp had made collections of them from the 
Orkney Islands. Hucn Mutter had discovered them at Cromarty; Lady 
Gorpon Cumminc, Mr Patrick Durr, the Rev. Dr Gorpon, Mr ALEXANDER 
Rosertson of Elgin, and other zealous collectors found them in new localities 
along the southern shores of the Moray Firth. Lord ENNISKILLEN and Sir 
Puitie EcerToN had acquired some fine specimens from these regions, and had 
brought them to the notice of geologists and paleontologists. Much confusion 
still existed, however, as to the zoological grade of the organisms. That most 
of them were fishes, even though of very remarkable types, was generally 
admitted ; though some of the larger teeth had been popularly described as 
parts of reptiles; the broad head plates of Coccosteus had been referred to as 
those of an ancient tortoise ; while the strange winged form of the Pterichthys 
had been gravely figured and described as that of a primeval beetle. It was 
not until the time when AGassiz, in the course of his researches into the natural 
history of fossil fishes, made acquaintance with the undescribed forms which 
had been obtained from the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, that firm data 
could be used in comparing the paleontological characters of the system in 
different parts of the country. He first visited Scotland in the year 1834, and 
again in 1840, when he had opportunities of personally inspecting the collec- 
tions of ichthyolites from the northern counties, and collecting materials for 
his great work on fossil fishes. So large, however, did he eventually find these 
materials to be, that he devoted to their illustration a special volume—his well- 
known Poissons Fossiles du Vieux Gres Rouge. It is hardly possible to over- 
estimate the importance of this work in the history of inquiry into the pale- 
ontology of the Old Red Sandstone. To the labours of AGassiz we are 
indebted for most of the knowledge which we possess regarding the curious 
fishes which he was the first to recognise and describe. Working, as he did, 
often with imperfect materials, and unfamiliar as he was with the singular 
differences in the state of preservation, and consequent aspect of the organisms 
according to the varying nature of the matrix in which they are enclosed, he, 
no doubt, must have been occasionally puzzled and deceived by the specimens 
before him, and may have been led to multiply species which a succeeding 
