435 
of Edinburgh , Session 1876 - 77 . 
Rhadinichthys ferox , sp. nov. Traquair. 
Of this new species there is one tolerably entire example from 
Wardie in the Hugh Miller Collection in the Edinburgh Museum 
of Science and Art. A short time ago also the Museum acquired a 
fragment of the head and anterior part of the body, collected by Mr C. 
W. Peach, and quite recently another fragment, a portion of the body, 
was presented by Mr David Grieve. In the following description 
these specimens will be referred to as Nos. 1, 2, and 3 respectively. 
Description . — The specimen in the Hugh Miller Collection has 
undergone a twist about the middle of the body, and shows, more- 
over, only a portion of the caudal fin, so that it is difficult to 
estimate its original length. As it is, it measures 5f inches in 
length, but it is quite evident that when alive it must have been 
considerably longer. 
The head equals If inch in length, and shows superiorly a cast 
of the greater part of the inner surface of the cranial buckler, with 
the lines of demarcation between the parietal, frontal, squamosal, 
and post-frontal bones. The opercular bones are not seen, but a 
portion of the maxilla, and the greater part of the mandible are 
exhibited, the latter bearing sharp conical teeth of different sizes, 
those externally placed being very small, while one large laniary, 
Jq inch in length, is conspicuous. In specimen No. 2 the impres- 
sions are seen of the parietal, squamosal, opercular, prseopercular, 
post-temporal, and supra-clavicular bones, and of the posterior part 
of the maxilla, these impressions clearly showing that the external 
sculpture of the bones in question was of a highly ornate character, 
consisting of sharply defined, flexuous, branching, anastomising, and 
interrupted ridges, tending to pass into tubercles at the inner margin 
of each parietal. 
The scales are of moderate size on the flanks, becoming rather 
small posteriorly, while on the belly they are low and narrow. 
Over the whole body their outer surfaces are highly ornate, the 
ornamentation consisting of fine sharply defined ridges, forming a 
pattern which is usually, as it were, divided by a diagonal passing 
from the anterior-superior to the posterior-inferior angle of the scale. 
On the anterior-inferior half of the scale the ridges run parallel with 
the anterior and inferior margins, impinging posteriorly on the 
diagonal, while on the posterior-superior half they pass obliquely 
downwards and backwards, mostly parallel with the diagonal, 
