s which probably went
together. For about three-fifths of the entire length of the animal the
surface was unprotected by dermal plates; and the muscles must have
found the fulcrums on which they acted in the internal skeleton
exclusively. And hence a necessity for greater strength in their
interior framework than in that of fishes as strongly fenced round
externally by scales or plates as the coleoptera by their elytrine, or
the crustacea by their shells. Even in the Coccosteus, however, the
ossification was by no means complete; and the analogies of the skeleton
seem to have allied it rather with the skeletons of the sturgeon family
than with the skeletons of the sharks or rays. The processes of the
vertebrae were greatly more solid in their substance than the vertebrae
themselves,--a condition which in the sharks and rays is always
reversed; and they frequently survive, each with its little sprig of
bone, formed like the letter Y, that attached it to its centrum,
projecting from it, in specimens from which the vertebral column itself
has wholly disappeared. I found frequent traces, during my exploratory
labors in Orkney, of the dorsal and ventral fins of this ichthyolite;
but no trace whatever of the pectorals or of the caudal fin. There seem
to have been no pectorals; and the tail, as I have always had occasion
to remark, was apparently a mere point, unfurnished with rays.

In descending from the cliffs upon the quarries, my companion pointed to
an angular notch in the rock-edge, apparently the upper termination of
one of the numerous vertical cracks by which the precipices are
traversed, and which in so many cases on the Orkney coast have been
hollowed by the waves into long open coves or deep caverns. It was up
there, he said, that about twelve years ago the sole survivor of a
ship's crew contrived to scramble, four days after his vessel had been
dashed to fragments against the rocks below, and when it was judged that
all on board had perished. The vessel was wrecked on a Wednesday. She
had been marked, when in the offing, standing for the bay of Stromness;
but the storm was violent, and the shore a lee one; and as it was seen
from the beach that she could scarce weather the headland yonder, a
number of people gathered along the cliffs, furnished with ropes, to
render to the crew whatever assistance might be possible in the
circumstances. Human help, however, was to avail them nothing. Their
vessel, a fine schooner