POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
ON SOME ARMOURED FISHES. 
By HENRY WOODWWRD, F.R.S., F.G.S. 
[PLATES I. and II.] 
T HE doctrine of “evolution,” or the tendency among animals 
to produce variations, which under certain conditions may 
survive or even supplant the parent-form, has attracted so much 
attention of late, that it may not be without interest to glance 
at some of the first representatives of the Vertebrate sub-king- 
dom, whose remains are left to us in the older rocks, in order to 
ascertain whether Palaeontology affords any evidence which may 
be of service in elucidating this most interesting subject. 
And here at the outset, it must be confessed that the oft- 
pleaded imperfection of the geological record leaves much untold 
which the naturalist seeks to discover. 
Taking the class of Fishes as the earliest representatives of 
the Vertebrata, we naturally hope to find evidence of the first 
and simplest forms preserved to us in a fossil state ; but the re- 
searches of the zoologist have brought to light a form now living 
which, from the perishable nature of its entire organism, we can 
never hope to find fossil ; and comparative anatomy shows us 
that the ordinarily received notion of a vertebrate animal being 
one which possesses a backbone, frequently fails us from the 
apparent absence of this most important part ! 
For example, we have in the anomalous Amphioxus or 
“Lancelet” (Woodcut, Fig. 1) an animal placed with the 
Vertebrata, yet of the most elementary construction conceivable. 
Indeed, it seems paradoxical to class such a creature with verte- 
brate animals, seeing that it has no skeleton , properly so called ; 
the bony centra of the vertebral column are represented by a 
NEW SERIES, VOL. II. NO. V. B 
