Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/76

48 formed plates, that diminish in size and increase in number towards the head, and which are separated like the pieces of a dissected map, by deep sutures. They all present the tuberculated surface. The eyes are placed in front, on a prominence much lower than the roof-like ridge of the back; the mouth seems to have opened, as in many fishes, in the edge of the creature's snout, where a line running along the back would bisect a line running along the belly, but this part is less perfectly shown by my specimens than any other. The two arms or paddles are placed so far forward as to give the body a disproportionate and decapitated appearance. From the shoulder to the elbow, if I may employ the terms, there is a swelling muscular appearance, as in the human arm; the part below is flattened so as to resemble the blade of an oar, and it terminates in a strong sharp point. The tail—the one leg on which, as exhibited in one of my specimens, the creature seems to stand—is of considerable length, more than equal to a third of the entire figure, and of an angular form, the base representing the part attached to the body, and the apex its termination. It was covered with small tuberculated rhomboidal plates like scales; and where the internal structure is shown, there are appearances of a vertebrated bone, with rib-like processes standing out at a sharp angle."—p. 73.

a. Coccosteus cuspidatus. b. Part of its tail. c. An abdominal lozenge-shaped plate of the same fish.

Closely allied to Pterichthys is the genus Coccosteus; "both were