REMARKS ON CEPHALASPIDES. 



139 



are three good specimens in the Montrose Museum, one of which 

 was discovered in a quarry near Brechin ; another is from the 

 neighbourhood of Friockkeim. I have also been able to secure three 

 specimens in tolerable preservation. Two of these were found in a 

 quarry at Legguston, near Friockheini. The only other specimen I 

 know of, a very small one picked up by Mr. Walter McMcoll, in a 

 singularly rich deposit discovered by him in the Sidlaw range, is now 

 in the cabinet of Lord Kinnaird. As already stated the buckler- 

 shaped heads are occasionally met with wherever the flagstones are 

 wrought, in some places rather plentifully, as in a quarry on the Tur 

 hill range, about a mile east from the Mansion House of Pitscandly, 

 also in a Red Sandstone quarry near Brechin ; yet even there these 

 are only to be had by getting the workmen to preserve them as they 

 turn up. Indeed I may say that the only locality which has as yet 

 yielded these organisms to individual research is mentioned as dis- 

 covered in the Sicllaws by Mr. Walter McNicholl, one of the most 

 energetic and consequently successful of our local explorers. On the 

 same slab on which Mr. McXicholl found the small entire Cephalaspis 

 noticed above, may be seen the heads of some four or five others, some 

 of these heads showing the very lengthened and toothed cusps above 

 described. 



Whether these lengthened and toothed cusps may mark a different 

 species from that generally found (jQephalaspis Lyellii) it is not my 

 province to decide : my own impression however is that this rather 

 points to difference in age or sex, most probably the latter. Should 

 this be the case it is worthy of remark that only one species of 

 Cephalaspis has yet been found in Forfarshire (in Scotland I ought 

 lather to say), where the remains of these curious creatures have been 

 found in comparative abundance and good preservation, while in the 

 contemporaneous rocks of England, where, so far as I am aware, they 

 are both rarer and much more fragmentaiy, there would seem to 

 have been not only a considerable number of different species detected, 

 but also the so nearly allied genus Auclienaspis. Could it be possible 

 that the above causes, age or sex, should have occasioned this seeming 

 variety of species — fracture and displacement of the parts when first 

 laid down might also occasion very considerable apparent divergence. 



Beyond Forfarshire I only know of one locality that has been at 

 all fruitful in these organisms, the well-known den of Balruddery, 

 and this is just on the confines of the counties of Perth and Forfar. 

 One or two heads have also been found in Canterland Den, in 

 Kincardineshire, by the Rev. Hugh Mitchell, of Craig, A quarry in 

 Sheriffmuir, not far from the Dunblane station of the Scottish Midland 

 Railway, has yielded one imperfect head ; and two have been got at 

 Langfine, near Muirkirk, in Ayrshire. In no case has an entire fish 

 been found in any of these localities. 



In this short notice of the Forfarshire Cephalaspis I have purposely 

 endeavoured, as far as I could, to avoid all scientific names and phrases, 

 so that my description might be as intelligible as possible to all your 

 readers. I ought also to remark that although the proportions and 



