Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/80

52 however, I saw enough to exhilirate and interest; I wrought on till the advancing tide came splashing over the nodules, and a powerful August sun had risen towards the middle sky; and were I to sum up all my happier hours, the hour would not he forgotten in which I sat down on a rounded boulder of granite, by the edge of the sea, when the last bed was covered, and spread out on the beach before me the spoils of the morning."—p. 139.

Although our readers may perhaps think that these extracts have already extended to an unreasonable length, we cannot resist the temptation of laying before them the description and figure of a fish, still more strange, still more unlike the ordinary figure of a fish, than either of those hitherto enumerated. The genus Cephalaspis appears to be numerous both in species and individuals, but somewhat restricted in its geological range. It is the animal already noticed, whose body possesses a pictorial resemblance to that of a trilobite. With the author's description of this most anomalous animal our notice of 'The Old Red Sandstone' must close. We heartily commend the work and the subject to all lovers of nature; it appears to us an ample field for research—a field in which it is impossible to wander without the opportunity at least being afforded of reaping an abundant harvest.

Cephalaspis Lyellii.

"Has the reader ever seen a saddler's cutting-knife?—a tool with a crescent-shaped blade, and the handle fixed transversely in the centre of its concave side. In general outline the Cephalaspis resembled this tool,—the crescent-shaped blade representing the head,—the transverse handle the body. We have but to give the handle an angular instead of a rounded shape, and to press together the pointed horns of the crescent till they incline towards each other, and the convex or sharpened edge is elongated into a semiellipse, cut in the line of its shortest diameter, in order to produce the complete form of the Cephalaspis. The head, compared with the body, was of great size, comprising fully one-third the creature's entire length. In the centre, and placed closely together, as in many of the flat fish, were the eyes. Some of the specimens show two dorsals, and an anal and caudal fin. The thin and angular body presents a jointed appearance, somewhat like that of a lobster or trilobite. Like the bodies of most of the ichthyolites of the system, it was covered with variously-formed scales of bone; the creature's head was cased in strong plates of the same material, the whole upper side lying under one huge buckler, and hence the name Cephalaspis, or buckler-head. In proportion to its