249 
He supposes the fine light-coloured calcareous mass in which they 
are imbedded to have been formed by the deposition of carbonate of 
lime from lime-stone heated by volcanic fires, and plunged in this 
state in the ocean. By this means, he thinks the fish would be de- 
stroyed, and would remain in the calcareous magma, which, as it 
became condensed, would retain and absorb the putrid gases evolved 
from the fish, and would thereby become a stink-stone, yielding its 
peculiarly offensive smell by attrition. 
The British Isles are not so productive of this class of fossils as are 
several of the places on the Continent, which have been just particu- 
larized. In Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, 
Dorsetshire, and Kent, however, some specimens of entire, or nearly 
entire fishes have been found. 
In Mr. Donovan’s collection is a very beautiful and complete im- 
pression of a small fish on Portland stone. This fish much resembles 
a smelt in size and form. In the same collection is a very fair and 
perfect impression of a small fish, in bluish lime -stone, from Burford, 
in Oxfordshire; but which I have never had the opportunity of 
examining so closely, as to be authorized in forming an opinion under 
what genus it mjght be placed. 
The Hon. Daines Barrington communicated to the Royal Society, 
in 1755, the figure and description of a fossil, found at Bath, which 
he conceived to be part of a fossil beaver’s tail. A comparison, how- 
ever, of this fossil, with some specimens which were formerly in Mr. 
Strange’s Musuem, and which were found in the neighbourhood of 
Wevmouth, determines this fossil to be part of a fish. 
This is plainly evinced in one of these specimens, in which the form 
of the body is observable, and its upper and lower terminations are 
nearly preserved. From the comparative thinness and width of the 
body, it may perhaps be considered as of the family Leptosomes, of 
Dumeril, and of the genus Pleuronectes. As neither the fins nor the 
gills are preserved, in any specimen which I have seen, no opinion 
K K 
VOL. III. 
