42 RAMSAY H. TRAQUAIR’S 
which, some years ago I pointed out as existing between that living genus 
and the extinct Palzeoniscidee.* 
This is, however, not the first case of the kind which has been recorded, 
for in a paper on the Fauna of the Lower Permian formation of Bohemia, 
by Prof. Anton Fritscu of Prague, I find the following brief notice :— 
“ Amblypterus, sp.—Ein kleiner schuppenloser Fisch mit grossen Flossen 
und erhaltenen innern Skeletresten.—Tremosna.” t 
No further particulars are here given, but we may look forward with 
pleasure and interest to its full description, as Prof. Frirscu’s great work 
on the Amphibia and Fishes of these strata progresses towards completion. 
With regard to the present instance, we may ask, Is it likely that the 
body may have been once clothed all over with scales like those of other 
Paleoniscide, but which had been dissolved away or removed by some process 
not at present understood, leaving the delicate bones of the internal skeleton 
uninjured? As lending some countenance to this view, three specimens of 
other fishes from the present collection may be quoted. 
The first of these is a tail of a very small specimen of Celacanthus 
Huzleyi, to which I have already alluded (p. 21), and in which no scales are 
visible, though the internal bones are very distinctly preserved. 
The second is the unique specimen, from Coldstream, of the little fish to 
be presently described as Holurus ischypterus, in which the scales are 
not preserved over the whole of the body, though the general form is intact. 
Thirdly, in one of the two specimens of the remarkable form Tarrasius 
problematicus, scales are also invisible on the anterior part of the body. 
With regard to the Celacanthus, it must be noted that scales are present 
on all the other examples of the species, four in number, though they get 
indistinct towards the tail. The scales of Celacanthus are always thin and 
delicate, and in shale specimens, at least, they never prevent the more robust 
internal bones being seen; it is, therefore, perhaps not very wonderful that 
they should have disappeared in the tail of so small a specimen as the one 
referred to. 
Also in the Holurus ischypterus there seems to be evidence of the removal 
of scales by some process of decay, a black film being left on the parts of 
the body where they are absent. But here the process seems also to have 
affected the internal skeleton, which has also almost completely disappeared 
from the parts bare of scales, all that is seen of it being a few oblique 
lines indicating the neural spinous processes, and which are hardly visible 
* “ Carboniferous Ganoid Fishes,” pt. 1, Paleontogr. Soc. 1877, pp. 38-40. 
+ “Neue Uebersicht der in der Gaskohle und den Kalksteinen der Permformation in Bohmen 
vorgefundenen Thierreste.”—Sitzungsb. der Kon. bihm., Gesellsch. der Wissenschaften, 21 Marz, 
1879. 
