SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
429 
through Professor Huxley, on this subject. The material for this paper con- 
sisted of four specimens of Dorypterus liofmanni , which have been discovered 
by Joseph Duff, Esq., in the Marl-slate of Midderidge, and are believed to be 
the first examples of this fish which have been obtained in this country. The 
stratum from which they were procured is the same as that described by 
Prof. Sedgwick in the paper, published in the Transactions of this Society 
(2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 7(5, 77). The specimens show that the “ ribbon- 
shaped ” process mentioned by Germar is part of a peculiar exoskeleton, and 
that Dorypterus possessed ventral fins, which were situated in front of the 
pectorals, or “jugular.” Hitherto, no fishes with ventral fins other than 
“abdominal” in position, have been known to occur earlier than the 
Cretaceous epoch. The tail is heterocercal, not homocercal, as Germar 
supposed. The dentition is not displayed in any of the specimens, and the 
teeth were probably small and inconspicuous ; but the general structure of 
the fish shows it to be most nearly allied to the Pycnodonts. — Geological 
t Society , June 22. 
A Distal Portion of a Feather. — Prof. 0. C. Marsh mentions that he has 
just received from Prof. F. V. Hayden the distal portion of a feather, with 
the shaft and vane preserved from a freshwater Tertiary deposit of the 
Green Eiver Group, 'Wyoming Territory. 
The Lias of the Banat Austria. — This, says Professor It u pert Jones in a 
recent lecture, has abundance of terrestrial plants, forming a coal ; but here 
in the west the fossil trees and leaves of the Lias are but waifs and strays, 
and were washed to sea with the bones of the great Scelidosaurus ; and the 
sudden river floods must have killed by the million successive generations of 
fishes, Ammonites, and Belemnites, and buried them in thick new mud, to- 
gether with the unhurt carcases of the associated Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur. 
These last have their skin and bowels intact ; the molluscs were imbedded 
■with the animal in the shell, and the cuttles retain even their inkbags un- 
emptied, for death was quicker than their fear. Melting snow produces 
such sudden floods in temperate climates, and the monsoons on the eastern 
coast of India supply such abundance of fresh water, as to kill the sea-fish 
in myriads. 
Mr. Poulett Scrope and Mr. David Forbes. — The admirable lecture de- 
livered by Mr. David Forbes, F.R.S., before the Sunday Lecture Society, 
and which was published in the Geological Magazine , has undergone some 
valuable criticism by Mr. G. Poulett Scrope in the Geological Magazine for 
September. Those who go in for the views of either should read the 
opinions of both. 
A Neiv Species of Gavial. — Prof. 0. C. Marsh, of Yale College, U. S., 
reports an interesting discover} 7- . Some interesting reptilian remains have 
recently been obtained from the Eocene Greensand of Shark Eiver, Mon- 
mouth County, New Jersey, indicative of a new species of Gavial, con- 
siderably smaller than any crocodilian heretofore discovered. They were 
found together, and are evidently parts of the same skeleton. They consist 
of various fragments of the skull, and ten vertebrae. The coossification of 
the neural arches of the vertebrae, and the almost entire obliteration of the 
sutures in some of them, would imply that the individual, although diminu- 
tive, was nearly or quite mature. The portions of the skull preserved indi- 
