24 The American GeohxjLst. July, 1895 
The pectoral fins are two inches beliind the back of the 
mandible and about eleven inches farther back still may be 
seen parts of the two ventral fins. These show a similar fine 
structure and nineteen or twenty rays can be counted on one 
of the fragments. 
No part of the body behind these fins is preserved in the 
specimen, so that its whole length can only be inferred from 
its proportions. But it w'as an exceedingly slender fish, not 
apparently exceeding three inches in width at the j)ectoral 
fins and one inch and a half at the ventral. 
The skin was protected in whole or in part with a covering 
of small rhomboidal ganoid scales which are here and there 
preserved so as to exhibit their form and relationship. A few 
of them are shown, much magnified, in our figure. (Plate II.) 
Though the present specimen affords several data concern- 
ing this fish that were not previously known, yet, unfortu- 
nately, its imperfection renders the determination of some 
other critical questions impossible. The whole head above 
the maxillary is missing, so that nothing can be said of the 
orbit or the suspensorium, on the position of which latter the 
place of the animal in the system in part depends. Its refer- 
ence to the palfeoniscids is, however, satisfactorily confirmed 
by other and previously known evidence, such as the minute 
scales, the broad and numerous branchiostegal rays and the 
very slender body. The genus was accordingly placed by Mr, 
A, S, Woodward next to his Apateole/nif from New South 
Wales, a fish about ten inches long, whose length was about 
six times its greatest width, 
Actinophorns clnrki must have measured when alive at least 
thirty-six to forty inches while its greatest depth at the pec- 
toral fins did not exceed three and a half or four inches, 
making the former dimension about ten times the latter and 
showing a fish far surpassing the other in slenderness and 
grace. Apateolepis is also said to be without fulcra, which, 
as we have seen, is not true of Aclinophorus. 
In the family of the Palteoniscids the neural arches are 
more or less ossified and in many cases the hjemal arches also, 
especially toward the caudal end. This is true of Actinopho- 
rus. A well marked line of thin bones can be traced from the 
pectoral to the ventral fins, a distance of fifteen inches. The}' 
