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XXVIII. — On the Distribution of Fossil Fish-remains in the Carboniferous Mocks of the 

 Edinburgh District. By Ramsay H. Traquair, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., Keeper of 

 the Natural History Collection in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. 

 (With Two Plates.) 



(Read July 1. 1901. Given in for publication May 6. 1903. Issued separately, October 16, 1903.) 



The district in which the city of Edinburgh is situated was one of the first in Britain 

 from which fish-remains of Carboniferous age were collected. It is now sixty-seven 

 years ago since Agassiz described the fossil fishes which were discovered by Lord 

 Greenock at Wardie, Dr Hibbert at Burdiehouse, and Professor Jameson at Burnt- 

 island. The list given from this region in the " Tableau G^ndrale " at the beginning of 

 the Poissons Fossiles comprises twenty-nine names, of which eight were nomina nuda 

 and are not now verifiable, the original specimens being lost ; one, Diplodus minutus, was 

 described, but insufficiently, and the original is also lost ; six are synonyms of others in 

 the list ; leaving fourteen good species, of which one, Ptychacanthus sublaevis, is a 

 synonym of a Selachian spine (Tristychius arcuatus), described and figured from the 

 Glasgow district. 



The list given by Salter in the Appendix to the " Geology of the Neighbourhood of 

 Edinburgh" (Mem. Geol. Survey, Scotland, Sheet 32, 1861) is in the main a reproduc- 

 tion of that in the Poissons Fossiles, though it contains some additional species. Thirty- 

 one names are given, of which four are of genera only ; but of the rest, only eleven can 

 be said to represent species which will " stand " at the present time. The richness in 

 fishes of the Carboniferous rocks of the Edinburgh district had yet to be realised. 



In 1890, # after many years' work, I published a List of the Fossil Dipnoi and 

 Ganoidei of Fife and the Lothians, in which those of the Upper Old Red Sandstone 

 were also included. Fifty species were here enumerated, and of these forty will 

 stand as " good " for the district included in Sheet 32, with which we have to do in the 

 present paper. Adding the Selachian form then omitted, and bringing the whole list 

 up to date, we find that the Carboniferous Fish-fauna of the district in question, accord- 

 ing to present knowledge, numbers no less than eighty-seven named species. 



One feature of special interest in Scottish Carboniferous Palaeontology is the oppor- 

 tunity afforded of comparing the plants and animals which lived under similar estuarine 

 conditions during the deposition of the Lower and Upper divisions of the system respec- 

 tively. This cannot be so readily done in England or Ireland, where the Upper 

 Carboniferous rocks are mainly of " estuarine " or " lagoon " formation, and the Lower 

 almost as exclusively marine in their origin, except in the extreme north. The case is, 



* Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xvii. 1890, pp. 385-400. 

 TRANS. ROY SOC. EDIN., VOL. XL. PART III. (NO. 28). 5 i 



