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XXXII. — Report on Fossil Fishes collected by the Geological Survey of Scotland in the 

 Silurian Rocks of the South of Scotland. By Ramsay H. Teaquair, M.D., 

 LL.D., F.R.S., Keeper of the Natural History Collections in the Museum of 

 Science and Art, Edinburgh. (With Five Plates.) 



(Read July 4, 1898.) 



Introduction. 



In the autumn of last year (1897), Sir A. Geikie, F.R.S., Director-General of the 

 Geological Survey, kindly placed in my hands for description an important collection 

 of fossil fish-remains from the Silurian rocks of the Lesmahagow district, which had been 

 made by Messrs Macconochie and Tait, collectors to the Survey. I accordingly pre- 

 pared a brief report on these fishes, which was included by the Director-General in his 

 Summary of Progress for that year. 



The collection was, however, considerably increased by additional work on the part 

 of Mr Tait in the spring of the present year (1898). Many better and more complete 

 specimens were procured, and I was able to define one new genus and species, which 

 had previously been represented only by undeterminable fragments. The results gained 

 by the examination of the entire collection I now propose, with Sir Archibald Geikie's 

 sanction, to lay before this Society in detailed form. 



As might be expected, this collection is of the greatest importance both from a 

 geological and from a zoological standpoint. Though I understand that Mr James 

 Young of Lesmahagow had indeed found a fish in one of the beds, the " Ceratiocaris 

 Band," before the collectors of the Geological Survey came on the scene, the only 

 previous record, in any scientific publication, of the occurrence of such remains in the 

 Scottish Silurian rocks is to be found in a paper (xii.) by the late Dr Hunter- Selkirk of 

 Braidwood, in which he mentions the finding of " a few small scales, something like those 

 of Acanthodian fishes," in the rocks of Logan Water. Of special geological interest is 

 also the fact, that while fishes of the family Ccelolepidse, represented by detached scales 

 in the Upper Silurian rocks of England and Russia, occur in these Lesmahagow beds, 

 no trace has as yet been found in them of the Pteraspidse, the Cephalaspidse, or of the 

 Selachian spines and teeth which have been yielded by rocks of similar horizon elsewhere. 

 Moreover, all the species and all the genera but one are new to science, and some of 

 these throw unexpected light upon forms concerning which next to nothing was pre- 

 viously known. Others, too, are of appearance so strange that their precise place in the 

 system has yet to be determined. 



The fishes occur in special bands in the horizons designated by the Geological Survey 



VOL. XXXIX. PART III. (NO. 32). 6 M 



