
SOME HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED OBSERVATIONS 
OF ORESTES ST. JOHN ON PALEOZOIC 
FISHES. | 
C. R. EASTMAN. 
Mr. Orestes Sr. Joun, the only pupil of Professor Louis 
Agassiz who took up the study of fossil fishes, and whose 
researches in this class of vertebrates, published in Vols. VI 
and VII of the Minois Paleontology, are among the leading 
contributions to the literature of American Paleozoic forms, 
passed his early life in the vicinity of Waterloo, Iowa, and 
during a period of fifteen years, dating from 1863, brought 
together one of the finest collections of Meso-Devonian fish 
remains ever obtained from that state. This collection has 
recently been deposited in the Museum of Comparative Zoólogy 
at Cambridge, where Mr. St. John was formerly assistant in 
paleontology, and it is understood that further collections from 
the Carboniferous of the Mississippi valley are to follow. In 
the same institution are also preserved some of the type speci- 
mens which are described in Vol. VII of the ///inozs Reports, 
With casts of others that are now in the State Museum at 
Springfield, Illinois. 
Accompanying the St. John collection of Devonian fishes is 
à manuscript description and drawing of a nearly perfect man- 
dibular (gnathal) plate of Dinichthys pustulosus, an interesting 
Species whose occurrence in Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin has 
only recently been made known. As this species was originally 
described from portions of the dermal armor, examples of the 
dentition being at that time unknown, and as doubt has been 
expressed ! whether it really pertains to Dinichthys rather than 
to some other coccostean, it is of interest to find its dinichthyid 
nature confirmed by this early discovery of St. John’s, the credit 
! Dean, D. Palaontological Notes, Mem. JV. Y. Acad. Sci., vol. ii (1901), p. 122. 
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