tary rudder-like fin; other fish with the
membranes of their fins thickly covered with scales; creatures bristling
over with thorns; others glistening in an enamelled coat, as if
beautifully japanned; the tail in every instance among the less
equivocal shapes formed not equally, as in existing fish, on each side
the central vertebral column, but chiefly on the lower side--the column
sending out its diminished vertebrae to the extreme termination of the
fin. All the forms testify of a remote antiquity. The figures on a
Chinese vase or an Egyptian obelisk are scarce more unlike what now
exists in nature than are the fossils of the Lower Old Red Sandstone.

Lamarck, on the strength of a few striking facts which prove that to a
certain extent the instincts of species may be improved and heightened,
has concluded that there is a natural progress from the inferior orders
of being towards the superior, and that the offspring of creatures low
in the scale may belong to a different and nobler species a few thousand
years hence. Never was there a fancy so wild and extravagant. The
principle of adaptation still leaves the vegetable a vegetable, and the
dog a dog. It is true that it is a law of nature that the chain of being
is in some degree a continuous chain, and the various classes of
existence shade into each other. All the animal families have their
connecting links. Geology abounds with creatures of the intermediate
class.

Fishes seem to have been the master existences of two great geological
systems, mayhap of three, ere the age of reptiles began. Now, fishes
differ very much among themselves, some ranking nearly as low as worms,
some nearly as high as reptiles; and we find in the Old Red Sandstone
series of links which are wanting in the present creation, and the
absence of which occasions a wide gap between the two grand divisions of
fishes, the bony and the cartilaginous.

Of all the organisms of the system one of the most extraordinary is the
pterichthys, or winged fish, which the writer had the pleasure of
introducing to the acquaintance of geologists. Had Lamarck been the
discoverer he would unquestionably have held that he had caught a fish
almost in the act of wishing itself into a bird. There are wings which
want only feathers, a body which seems to have been as well adapted for
passing through the air as through water, and a tail with which to
steer.

My first idea regarding it was that I had discovered a con