04 50 



Fishes. 



collections, of the possible future value of all objects of Natural History, when properly 

 labelled and arranged. Some happy accident is sure to come to the relief of the most 

 helpless of fossils, the most shapeless of fragments. * * * * The family must 

 have been very extensive, for Dr. Leidy is now able to recognise its representation by 

 some before enigmatical fragments from Nebraska and from the Lower Mississippi: 

 the formation, we know, extended across the Continent, because its shells are found 

 from Mexico to the Arctic Sea, and on Vancouver's Island. At the time this Had- 

 donfield individual browsed in the Valley of the Delaware, — for of course he did not 

 live at Haddonfield, at that time many fathoms under sea,— the Gulf Stream passed 

 up the immense strait or narrow tertiary ocean, bounded on the east by the rocks of 

 Missouri, Iowa and Lake Superior, and on the west by the Rocky Mountains, into the 

 Northern Sea. The climate of the Delaware was at that time deprived of its present 

 equatorial winds from the south-east, but was equally well secured from the north- 

 westers, which come out from the centre of the British possessions. The average cold 

 was no doubt greater, but the variation less severe. England was then as damp as 

 now, but much colder, and the mountains of Scotland were covered with ice and snow ; 

 yet the Iguanodon, cousin of the Hadrosaurus, found himself comfortable there. As 

 whales can exist in every zone of latitude, as mammoths and elephants once lived on 

 the shores of the Siberian Circumpolar Sea, as well as in the jungles of India, so no 

 doubt these gigantic two-legged saurians made their earthquaking hops as friskly in 

 cold and heat, whenever the continental rivers ran strong and the ocean shore was 

 near. — Friends 1 Intelligencer, December 17, 1858. 



Is the Mud -Fish a Fish or an Amphibian? 

 By Edward Newman.* 



It cannot but appear strange to those experts in Natural History, 

 who may chance to be unacquainted with the mud-fish, that there 

 should exist any animal of large size and clearly pronounced form, 

 which when dead has undergone the anatomical scrutiny of an Owen, 

 and when living has been exposed to the observation of a hundred 

 well-instructed eyes, yet concerning which doubts exist as to its amphi- 

 bious or ichthyac character. Such, however, is the case, and if by 

 chance, in conversation, we meet with any one who doubts or contra- 

 venes the assertion, we shall find on inquiry that he has adopted without 

 examining the ichthyac or amphibian hypothesis by the simple process 

 of pinning his faith on another man's sleeve, has saved himself the 

 trouble of thinking at all by adopting implicitly the thoughts of another. 

 One man will say, "Oh, that question has long been settled : Fitzinger 



* Read before the Greenwich Natural History Club, on Wednesday the 12th of 

 January, 1851). 



