Part 19

Mr. Miller is the author also of Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, one vol. 8vo.; A Letter from one of the Scotch people to the Right Honorable Lord Brougham and Vaux, on the opinions expressed by his Lordship in the Auchterarder Case; and The Whiggism of the Old School, as exemplified in the Past History and Present Position of the Church of Scotland. The second of these works is well characterized by Mr. Gladstone as “an able, elegant, and masculine production.”

London, 1847, pp. 409

Since the above sentence was written and set in type, I have learned that my ingenious friend, Mr. Charles Peach of the Customs, Fowey, so well known for his palæontological discoveries, has just found in the Devonian system of Cornwall, fragments of what seem to be dermal plates of Asterolepis. It is a somewhat curious circumstance, that the two farthest removed extremities of Great Britain—Cornwall and Caithness—should be tipped by fossiliferous deposits of the same ancient system, and that organisms which, when they lived, were contemporary, should be found embedded in the rocks which rise over the British Channel on the one extremity, and overhang the Pentland Frith on the other.

Figured from a Thurso specimen, slightly different in its proportions from the Stromness specimen described.

Dr. George Garson, Stromness, and Mr. William Watt, jun. Skaill.

The Continental assertors of the development hypothesis are greatly more frank than those of our own country regarding the “life after death,” and what man has to expect from it. The individual, they tell us, perishes forever; but, then, out of his remains there spring up other vitalities. The immortality of the soul is, it would seem, an idle figment, for there really exists no such things as souls; but is there no comfort in being taught, instead, that we are to resolve into monads and maggots? Job solaced himself with the assurance that, even after worms had destroyed his body, he was in the flesh to see God. Had Professor Oken been one of his comforters, he would have sought to restrict his hopes to the prospect of living in the worms. “If the organic fundamental substance consist of infusoria,” says the Professor, “so must the whole organic world originate from infusoria. Plants and animals can only be metamorphoses of infusoria. This being granted, so also must all organizations consist of infusoria, and, during their destruction, dissolve into the same. Every plant, every animal, is converted by maceration into a mucous mass; this putrefies, and the moisture is stocked with infusoria. Putrefaction is nothing else than a division of organisms into infusoria,—a reduction of the higher to the primary life.... Death is no annihilation, but only a change. One individual emerges out of another. Death is only a transition to another life,—not into death. This transition from one life to another takes place through the primary condition of the organic, or the mucus.”—Physio-Philosophy, pp. 187-189.

I trust that at least by and by there may be an exception claimed, from the general, but, I am sure, well-meant, censure of this passage, in favor of the Free Church of Scotland. It has got as its Professor of Physical Science—thanks to the sagacity of Chalmers—Dr. John Fleming, a man of European reputation, and all that seems further necessary, in order to secure the benefits contemplated in the appointment, is, that attendance on his course should be rendered imperative on all Free Church candidates for the ministry.

Agassiz’s description of the Pterichthys, as quoted by Humboldt, in his Cosmos.

From Murchison’s Silurian System.

These scales, which occur in a detached state, in a stratified clay of the Old Red Sandstone, near Cromarty, present for their size a larger extent of cover than the scales of any other Ganoid.

A peculiarity which also occurs in the anterior dorsal of the Dipterus.

From the head of Raja clavata.

The darker, upper patch in this figure indicates a portion in which the scales of the fins in the fossil still retain their enamel;—the lighter, a portion from which the enamel has disappeared.

The Acanths of the Coal Measures possess the cranial buckler.

Professor Owen, in fixing the homologies of the ichthyic head, differs considerably from Cuvier; but his view seems to be demonstrably the correct one. It will, however, be seen, that in my attempted comparison of the divisions of the ancient ganoid cranium with those of the craniums of existing fishes, the points at issue between the two great naturalists are not involved, otherwise than as mere questions of words. The matter to be determined, for instance, is not whether plate A in the skulls of the cod and Coccosteus be the homologue of a part of the occipital or that of a part of the parietal bones, but whether plate A in the Coccosteus be the homologue of plate A in the cod. The letters employed I have borrowed from Agassiz’s restoration of the Coccosteus; whereas the figures intimate divisions which the imperfect keeping of the specimens on which the ichthyologist founded did not enable him to detect.

The jaws (10, 10) which exhibit in the print their greatest breadth, would have presented in the animal, seen from beneath, their narrow under-edges, and have nearly fallen into the line of the sub-opercular plates, (13, 13.)

In all probability it is likewise the principle of the placoid skull. The numerous osseous points by which the latter is encrusted, each capable of increase at the edges, seem the minute bricks of an ample dome. It is possible, however, that new points may be formed in the interstices between the first formed ones, as what anatomists term the triquetra or Wormiana form between the serrated edges of the lambdoidal suture in the human skull; and that the osseous surface of the cerebral dome may thus extend, as the dome itself increases in size, not through the growth of the previously existing pieces,—the minute bricks of my illustration,—but through the addition of new ones. Equally, in either case, however, that essential difference between the placoid skull and the placoid vertebra, to which I have referred, appears to hinge on the circumstance, that while the osseous nucleus of each vertebral centrum could form, in even its most complicated shape, from a single point, the osseous walls of the cranium had to be formed from hundreds. The accompanying diagram serves to show after what manner the vertebral centrum in the Ray enlarges with the growth of the animal, by addition of bony matter external to the point in the middle, at which ossification first begins. The horizontal lines indicate the lines of increment in the two internal cones which each centrum comprises, and the vertical ones the lines of increment in the lateral pillars.

SECTION OF VERTEBRAL CENTRUM OF THORNBACK.]

One of the Thurso coprolites in my possession is about one fourth longer than the larger of the two specimens figured here, and nearly thrice as broad.

In two of these, in a collection of several score, I have failed to detect the spiral markings, though their state of keeping is decidedly good. There are other appearances which lead me to suspect that the Asterolepis was not the only large fish of the Lower Old Red Sandstone; but my facts on the subject are too inconclusive to justify aught more than sedulous inquiry.

The shaded plate, (a,) accidentally presented in this specimen, belongs to the upper part of the head. It is the posterior frontal plate F, which half-encircled the eye orbit, (see fig. 29;) and I have introduced it into the print here, as in none of the other prints, or of any other specimens, is its upper surface shown.

The late Mr. John Thurston.

“Mr. Phillips proceeded to describe some remains of a small fish, resembling the Cheiracanthus of the Old Red Sandstone, scales and spines of which he had found in a quarry at Hales End, on the western side of the Malverns. The section presented beds of the Old Red Sandstone inclined to the west; beneath these were arenaceous beds of a lighter color, forming the junction with Silurian shales; these, again, passing on to calcareous beds in the lower part of the quarry, containing the corals and shells of the Aymestry Limestone, of their agreement with which stronger evidence might be obtained elsewhere. He had found none of these scales in the junction beds or in the Upper Ludlow Shales; but about sixty or one hundred feet lower, just above the Aymestry Limestone, his attention had been attracted to discolored spots on the surface of the beds, which, upon microscopic examination, proved to be the minute scales and spines before mentioned. These remains were only apparent on the surface, whilst the ‘fish-bed’ of the Upper Ludlow rock, as it usually occurred, was an inch thick, consisting of innumerable small teeth and spines.”—Report, in “Athenæum” for 1842, of the Proceedings of the Twelfth Meeting of British Association, (Manchester.)

“This is the lowest position” (that of the Onondago Limestone) “in the State of New York in which any remains have been found higher in the scale of organized beings than Crustacea, with the exception of an imperfectly preserved fish-bone discovered by Hall in the Oriskany Sandstone. That specimen, together with the defensive fish-bone found in this part of the New York system, furnishes evidences of the existence of animals belonging to the class vertebrata during the deposition of the middle part of the protozoic strata.”—American Journal of Science and Arts for 1846, p. 63.

“The shales alternating with the Wenlock Limestone.” (Edinburgh Review.)

The Silurian Placoids are most adequately represented by the Cestracion of the southern hemisphere; but I know not that of the peculiar character and instincts of this interesting Placoid,—the last of its race,—there is any thing known. For its form and general appearance see fig. 49, page 177.

Such as the dog-fishes, picked and spotted.

The twelfth in Spinax Acanthius, and the fourteenth in Scyllium Stellare.