REPORT ON FOSSIL FISHES. 47 
the obliquity of the suspensorium ; but which, according to its other points of 
structure, it would be hard to exclude from that family. I have already ex- 
pressed the opinion (p. 45), that it is meanwhile better to enlarge the definition 
of the group, than to proceed prematurely to break it up into other families. 
It will also be convenient to include under Canobius several other new 
species of Palzeoniscidze, which closely resemble Cunobius Ramsayi in external 
form as well as in the direction of the suspensorium, although in certain other 
points of cranial osteology they differ from that species as well as from each 
other. Two of these, namely, Canobius pulchellus and Canobius politus, which 
are rather more typically Paleeoniscid than the others in the configuration of some 
of their head bones, I once thought of forming into another genus ; but, especially 
seeing that the dentition is not yet ascertained in any of these forms, it seems also 
somewhat premature to proceed to the splitting of genera upon these distinctions. 
The generic name is taken from Canobie, the district in which the fossili- 
ferous beds of Glencartholm are situated. 
Canobius Ramsayi, sp. nov. Traquair. 
Pl. V. figs. 1-4. 
Description.—Length 24 to 3 inches, shape shortly fusiform, deep in front 
and tapering rapidly towards the tail. The length of the head is contained five 
times, the greatest depth of the body little more than three times in the total. 
The head is short and deep, with a very obtusely rounded snout in front, 
behind which and nearly right over the mouth is a circular orbit of considerable 
size. As far as can be made out, the bones of the cranial roof seem quite 
paleeoniscid in their arrangement, their external surfaces are marked with com- 
paratively coarse flattened corrugations. The suspensorium is nearly vertical, 
being only very slightly inclined backwards; the posterior margin of the 
opercular flap has a regularly curved semilunar contour. The operculum is 
small, its anterior margin is nearly vertical, but its inferior one so oblique as to 
look as much backwards as downwards, and consequently the posterior 
margin is considerably shorter than the anterior one—the superior being the 
shortest of all. It is succeeded below by an interoperculum of a somewhat 
rhomboidal shape, the acute angles being the posterior-superior and anterior- 
inferior ; its vertical depth is fully as great as that of the operculum, and its 
anterior and posterior margins continue uninteruptedly in the gentle curvature 
of those of that plate. The przoperculum simulates that of Lwrynotus and 
other Platysomide, being a narrow triangular plate, with acute superior and 
inferior angles, and a very obtuse anterior one; its long posterior margin, 
which fits on to the anterior margins of the operculum and interoperculum 
behind, is gently convex and nearly vertical in position; the other two short 
margins are gently concave, the anterior-superior being the longer, and fitting 
VOL XXX. PART I. Hu 
