V. On a Specimen of Acanthodes Wardii, Egerton, from the Lanarkshire Coal Field

Abstract

For a number of years I have frequently found small, curved spines, grooved parallel to tbe plane of the anterior face, embedded in the carbonaceous shales that overlie the Palace Craig blackband ironstone in the neighbourhood of Airdrie, and also in the roof of the splint coal at Newmains, Wishaw, and Newton, near Cambuslang. As they had not been found associated with other parts of the fish, I felt unable to establish their generic or specific characters. Associated with these were found small scales, confusedly scattered over the slabs of shale. In form they are rhomboidal, smooth, and much raised in the centre. Associated with these were portions of what appeared to be shagreen. The doubts surrounding these interesting forms were happily dispelled by bhe discovery, in the spring of this year, of a portion of a tolerably-well-preserved specimen of Acanthodes, with the ventral, anal, and a part of the dorsal spine, in position, contained in a slab of the Palace Craig ironstone. The specimen measures, from near the extremity of the caudal fin to an inch beyond the ventral spine, fully fifteen inches. Through the kindness of Mr. John Ward, Longton, Staffordshire, who forwarded me a specimen of Acanthodes Wardii, I was enabled to compare my specimen with it; and finding it agreed in every detail with that species, except in the size,* I had no difficulty in recognising in the Lanarkshire specimen both the generic and specific characters of that species. The structural characters of this fish have This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract