Hecherches sur les Poissons Posailes. 73 



tribute something towards the advancement of a branch of 

 science, so eminently calculated to elucidate the early history 

 of the globe. For this purpose, we have here introduced 

 reduced, and of course imperfect copies of a few of the 

 beautiful plates of M. Agassiz's work, and shall now quote 

 the generic and specific characters of the species repre- 

 sented, under the hope, that the extensive tracts of coun- 

 try composed of Silurian rocks, old red sandstone, and the 

 coal measures of India, will afford some of the numerous 

 Placoid and Ganoid fossil forms which distinguish the 

 same rocks throughout Europe, as well as such parts of 

 America, as have been recently examined. The notice of 

 Dr. Falconer's collection in the succeeding article, shews 

 that discoveries have already been made in this country 

 of tertiary remains of fishes. This is a good beginning, 

 and may lead us to hope for more important discoveries in 

 the coal measures, the old red sandstone, and the Silurian 

 rocks, which we have reason to suppose are extensively 

 distributed throughout India. We have already remarked 

 that such discoveries do more in a day for the advance- 

 ment of education, than all the money which Councils of 

 Public Instruction spend in a year, because they afford 

 the most powerful incentives to study and enquiry, fur- 

 nishing at every step, new insight to the vast changes of 

 which we should otherwise remain in ignorance of, relative 

 to the structure and formation of the earth, and its riches 

 in objects of direct utility to man. 



Dapedius Colei, Agass. PI. V, belongs to the first family of 

 the Ganoids, called Lepidotus. The family is divided into 

 sections, in the first of which, the caudal vertebrae are ex- 

 tended to the end of the tail; (fig. 1, p. 77,) in the second the 

 tail is regular, (fig. 2, p. 77). Dapedius Colei as will be seen 

 in the drawing, belongs to the latter section, which contains 

 two genera, which have been confounded together as a single 

 genus by Mr. De la Beche, in the Geological Transactions. 



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