PREFACE. 
The first volume of the present Catalogue of Fossil Fishes—the 
result of several years’ most patient and assiduous study—appeared 
in March 1889 ; the second followed in January 1891; now, after 
an interval of four years, the third instalment of Mr. Arthur Smith 
Woodward’s carefully-executed work is satisfactorily completed. 
The whole of the first volume, and a part of the second, are 
occupied with the description of the great series of remains of the 
Elasmobranch Fishes (Sharks, Fays, and Chimseras); followed in 
Volume II. by the Ostracodermi (that remarkable group of most 
ancient bony-plated fishes, represented by CepTialaspis, Asterol&pis , 
Pterichthys, &c.), the Dipnoi, Crossopterygii, and, lastly, by the 
Palseoniscidse and Platysomidse. 
The present volume carries us through the great series of 
Actinopterygian fishes of the Chondrostean type, and completes the 
Catalogue to the end of the Jurassic series, including also some 
of the later survivors of these older forms. Many of these Jurassic 
fishes seem to foreshadow, in various points of their structure, an 
approach to the more modern forms of Teleostean fishes by which 
they were presen tly to be succeeded. 
This third volume will be found to contain much new and 
important information regarding the osteology and systematic 
position of the Pycnodonts. From specimens obtained from the 
a 
