80 THE OPEN BOOK OF NATURE 
discovery of the Piterichthys, or winged fish, at 
Cromarty in the year 1831. It is called Pterichthys 
Milleri in honour of its discoverer. I had better tell 
you the story in his own words. He says: “ Had 
Lamarck (a famous student of paleontology, who 
lived from 1744 to 1829) been the discoverer he 
would have held that he had caught a fish almost in 
the act of wishing itself into a bird. There are wings 
which want only feathers, a body which seems to 
have been as well adapted for passing through the 
air as in the water, and a tail by which to steer. ... 
| 2 
& b——— : : 2a | = : ) See: 
je ae 
Fic. 28.—Prepicutuys Mirterr (OLp Rep SANDSTONE). 
(After Traquair. ) 
I fain wish I could communicate to the reader the 
feeling with which I contemplated my first-found 
specimen. It opened with a single blow of the 
hammer, and there, on a ground of light-coloured 
limestone, lay the effigy of a creature fashioned ap- 
parently out of jet, with a body covered with plates, 
two powerful looking arms articulated [jointed] at 
the shoulders, a head as entirely lost in the trunk as 
that of the ray or the sunfish, and a long angular 
tail.... Imagine the figure of a man rudely drawn 
in black on a grey ground ; the head cut off by the 
shoulders ; the arms spread at full, as in the attitude 
