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can be formed with respect to its generic or specific resemblances. 
The square scales with which its body is covered, and which are so 
large in proportion to the size of the animal, render it different, I 
believe, from any recent fish which has been yet described. A patch 
of these scales is represented Plate XVI. Fig. 12. 
Numerous remains of fishes are found in the pyritous clay of 
Shepey ; but in so mutilated a state, as not to allow of forming any 
probable conjecture as to the relationship which they may bear to any 
existing fish. 
“ Our own country hath lately afforded what (says Mr. Jones) I 
apprehend to be the greatest curiosity of this sort that ever yet ap- 
peared. It is the entire figure of a bream, more than a foot in length, 
and of a proportionable depth, with the scales, fins, and gills, fairly 
projecting from the surface, like a sculpture in relievo, and with all 
the lineaments, even to the most minute fibres of the tail, so complete, 
that the like has not been seen before. It was taken from the stone 
quarries of Barrow, in Lincolnshire, and is now, by a fortunate cir- 
cumstance, in the possession of the learned Mr. Green, Woodwardian 
Professor of Fossils in the University of Cambridge.” P. 411. 
“ Another very fine fossil fish, of a different constitution, was dis- 
covered in a block of Leicestershire coal, at the house of the late Sir 
J. Robinson, in Northamptonshire. It is a considerable part of the 
body of a salmon (or rather the image of what once was its body), in 
a white sand-stone, with the lineaments of the scales. The cavity of 
the body is filled with coal, which is a very singular circumstance. 
It was lately presented, by Sir George Robinson, to Sir Ashton Lever, 
and is now preserved in his Museum*.” 
We are, however, by no means to admit of the existence of an 
identity of species, between fossil and recent fish, in all the instances 
in which it has been claimed. Similarity of appearance is by no means 
sufficient to warrant a decision in these cases ; the specific, or at least 
* Physiological Disquisitions, &c. by William Jones, F.R.S. 1781. 
