Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Two years ago, Mr. Robert H. Scott, F.R.S., Secretary to the I Council of the Meteorological Office, kindly sent me a letter from the Rev. J. G. Nicolay of Fremantle, Western Australia, accompanied by a photograph of a fossil, the original of which had been found by Mr. Davis ‘in the valley of the Arthur River, an affluent of the Gascoyne.’
I readily identified the fossil photographed as the impression of a fish-spine, similar in form, but more highly curved than those discovered in the Coal-measures of Arkansas, Indiana and Illinois, originally described by Prof. Leidy as a fish-jaw, and named by him Edestus vorax in 1855, and later as a fish-spine by MM. Newberry and Worthen (Geological Survey of Illinois, 1870, vol. iv. pp. 350–353, pi. i.).
page 1 note 1 Spelt, in some maps, “Gascoigae.”
page 3 note 1 Geological Survey of Illinois, vol. iv. Geology and Palæontology, 4to, Illinois, 1870, pp. 350–353, pi. i, figs. 1a and lb. Some contusion exists in the references to the figures here; for of the two species drawn on the plate, the one named E. Heinrichsti agrees best with Leidy's original figure; whilst the one named E. vorax, which agrees with our woodcut (supra), has much larger denticles.
page 4 note 1 In Pleuracanthus the spines are barbed on both edges, and so also are the spines of the Sting-rays.