Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/79

Rh scales seem disproportionately large. There is a general rudeness in the finish of the creature, if I may so speak, that reminds one of the tatooings of a savage, or the corresponding style of art in which he ornaments the handle of his stone-hatchet or his war-club. In the Cheiracanthus, on the contrary, there is much of a minute and cabinet-like elegance. The silvery smoothness of the fins, dotted with scarcely visible scales, harmonized with a similar appearance of head; a style of sculpture resembling the parallel etchings of the line engraver fretted the scales; the fins were small, and the contour elegant. I have already described the appearance of the unnamed fossils,—the seeming shell-work that covered the sides of the one,—its mast-like spines and sail-like fins; and the Gothic-like peculiarities that characterized the other,—its redded, obelisk-like spires, and the external frame-work of bone that stretched along its pectorals."—p. 121.

What can be more delightful than the feelings of a man who unassisted has worked out wonders like these! How enviable must be the sensations he experienced when these treasures were first revealed to his uninstructed eyes! Perhaps the volume contains nothing more beautiful than the account of some of his expeditions of discovery: take, for instance, that to the Southern Sutor, between the Moray and Cromarty Friths; the details of the geological features of the scene are fraught with interest even to the general reader, but this is increased tenfold when he arrays before us the result of his labours.

"I set myself carefully to examine. The first nodule I laid open contained a bituminous-looking mass, in which I could trace a few pointed bones and a few minute scales. The next abounded in rhomboidal and finely-enamelled scales, of a much larger size and more distinct character. I wrought on with the eagerness of a discoverer entering for the first time in a terra incognita of wonders. Almost every fragment of clay, every splinter of sandstone, every lime-stone nodule, contained its organism. Scales, spines, plates, bones, entire fish; but not one organism of the Lias could I find,—no ammonites, no belemnites, no gryphites, no shells of any kind; the vegetable impressions were entirely different; and not a single scale, plate, or ichthyodorulite could I identify with those of the newer formation. I had got into a different world, and among the remains of a different creation; but where was its proper place in the scale? The beds of the little bay are encircled by thick accumulations of diluvium and debris, nor could I trace their relation to a single known rock. I was struck, as I well might, by the utter strangeness of the forms,—the oar-like arms of the Pterichthys and its tortoise-like plates,—the strange buckler-looking head of the Coccosteus, which, I suppose, might possibly be the back of a small tortoise, though the tubercles reminded me rather of the skin of the shark,—the polished scales and plates of the Osteolepis,—the spined and scaled fins of the Cheiracanthus,—above all, the one-sided tail of at least eight out of the ten or twelve varieties of fossil which the deposit contained. All together excited and astonished me. But some time elapsed ere I learned to distinguish the nicer generic differences of the various organisms of the formation. I found fragments of the Pterichthys on this morning; but I date its discovery in relation to the mind of the discoverer, more than a twelvemonth later. I confounded the Cheiracanthus, too, with its single-spined and membranous dorsal, with one of the still unnamed fossils, furnished with two such dorsals; and the Diplopterus with the Osteolepis. Still,