11 
tion of these two, namely, the Ganoid and the Placoid 
orders ; the first being named from the splendour or 
shining character of the scales, and the latter from the 
scales consisting of plates of enamel more or less broad. 
Of the Ganoid order, Mr. T. described the characters, and 
exhibited specimens of four Genera which occur in the 
Yorkshire coal-field : Acanthodes, Platysomus, Megalicthys, 
and Holoptychus. After describing the Genus Megalicthys, 
the author related the following history of it. " The earliest 
known specimens of this fossil are some in the Leeds 
Museum, of which a description was sent upwards of 
fifteen years ago by the late Mr. Edward Sanderson George, 
to the Geological Society of London, at which time they 
were regarded as the remains of a Saurian reptile. In 1833, 
at the limestone quarries of Burdiehouse, near Edinburgh, 
were discovered in great abundance, teeth, scales, and 
bones of large size. These formed the subject of several 
papers to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in the 
earlier of which they were described as the remains of 
reptiles. In 1834, at the meeting of the British Associa- 
tion in Edinburgh, these fossils, which by this time had 
excited great interest amongst naturalists, were shewn to 
M. Agassiz. This gentleman immediately doubted their 
reptilian character, and advanced the opinion that they 
belonged to fishes, to that family of fishes of the Ganoid 
order which he had denominated Sauroid, from their 
numerous affinities to Saurian reptiles, and which have as 
their living type, or representative, the Lepidosteus. But 
of the truth or fallacy of this opinion, no positive evidence 
could be adduced, for the scales and the teeth had never 
yet been found at Burdiehouse in connexion. A few days 
afterwards, M. Agassiz, in company with Professor Buck- 
land, visited the Leeds Museum, and I well remember the 
delight, the extatic delight, evinced by the distinguished 
naturalist of Neufchatel when he first beheld the splendid 
heads of this animal in the Leeds Museum. Here, said he, 
we have the same scales and the same teeth as those of 
Burdiehouse, conjoined in the same individual. It is there- 
fore no longer a conjecture that they might belong to the 
same animal. And in these self-same specimens, we have 
the hyoid and branchiostic apparatus of bones (a series of 
bones connected with the gills, an indubitable character of 
fishes) ; it is therefore no longer a conjecture that the Burdie- 
house fossils were the remains of fishes and not of reptiles. 
Thus was dissipated, by the evidence aftorded by the identi- 
cal specimens now upon the table, the illusion founded upon 
the Burdiehouse fossilsthatSaiirian reptiles existed inthecar- 
boniferous era. To this animal M, Agassiz assigned the name 
of Megalichthys." Mr. Teale next severally described and 
illustrated by drawings and specimens the following genera 
