14 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
upon any aim as unattainable that may be won by steady 
honest perseverance. It is especially with reference to his dis- 
coveries of those strange armour-plated fishes in these Scottish 
deposits that his name deserves to occupy a prominent place in 
the present article. 
One of the most remarkable of Hugh Miller’s discoveries was 
that of the Pterichthys , obtained in 1831, but only made known 
in 1838, and named by Agassiz, at the Glasgow Meeting of the 
British Association in 1840, Pterichthys Milleri. (PI. I., Fig. 5.) 
“ When first brought to light by the single blow of a 
hammer, there appeared on a ground of light-coloured lime- 
stone the effigy of a creature, fashioned apparently out of jet, 
with a body covered with plates, two powerful- looking arms, 
articulated at the shoulders, a head as entirely lost in the trunk 
as that of the ray (or skate), and a long angular tail, equal in 
length to a third of the entire figure.”* 
A glance at our illustration forcibly reminds one of a man 
in a diver’s dress with its windowed helmet, or of that quaint 
costume of papier-mache and metal-work, regularly worn by 
the Japanese night-watch only fifteen years ago !f 
The head and the fore part of the body are defended by 
plates of hard bone, coated with enamel (thence called “ ganoid 
plates”); those of the trunk forming a buckler, composed of a 
back-plate and breast-plate, articulated together at the sides. 
The rest of the body was defended by small enamelled bony 
scales, thus giving it, like the old scale-armour, at once strength 
and flexibility. The fish had a small back fin, and a terminal 
heterocercal tail-fin; but these are very rarely displayed in fossil 
specimens. The pectoral spines, c, c, are also formed of the 
same ganoid material, like the buckler. The armour of the 
head, or helmet, appears to have been articulated by a movable 
joint to the trunk-buckler. 
The pectoral spines consist of two principal joints or seg- 
ments, both defended by finely tuberculated ganoid plates, like 
those of the head and trunk. From their form they would 
seem to have served to aid the fish in shuffling along over the 
sandy bottom or bed of an estuary if left dry at low water. 
The fins attached to the flexible part of the body indicate a certain 
power of swimming, though not with any great rapidity ; they 
include a small dorsal and a pair of ventrals ; these latter were 
first observed by Sir Philip Grey-Egerton. The jaws are small, 
and are armed with confluent denticles. (Owen.) 
* tiee “ Life of Hugh Miller.” By Sir David Brewster. 
t Now only to be seen in Museums or in private collections of arms and 
armour. One is just now for sale, at Wright’s, 90 Great Russell Street, 
being part of the Whitworth collection of armour. 
