. The testimony of the rocks; . em about aninch in diameter, and nearly of the same length, where it is broken the origin of this stem the small longitudinal ridges are distinctlymarked; and the whole outline of the figure, though converted into stone,is as well defined as it could have been in the living plant. Mr. Duncanaccompanies his description with a figure of the organism described,which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than theroot of a calamite, which in all the better preserved specimens contracts,instead of expanding, as it descends. The apparent e
. The testimony of the rocks; . em about aninch in diameter, and nearly of the same length, where it is broken the origin of this stem the small longitudinal ridges are distinctlymarked; and the whole outline of the figure, though converted into stone,is as well defined as it could have been in the living plant. Mr. Duncanaccompanies his description with a figure of the organism described,which, however, rather resembles the bulb of a liliaceous plant than theroot of a calamite, which in all the better preserved specimens contracts,instead of expanding, as it descends. The apparent expansion, however,in the Old Red specimen may be simply a result of compression in itsupper part; the under part certainly much resembles, in the dome-likesymmetry of its outline, the radical termination of a solitaiy 458 ON THE LESS KNOWN a few weeks before his death ; and he at once recognized inmy Berwickshire fern, so unequivocally an organism of theUpper Old Red, the Cydopterus Hlbernicus of thois-^cj Fig. CTCLOPTERUS HIBERNICUS. largely developed beds of yellow sandstone which form somarked a feature in the geology of the south of Ireland,and whose true place, whether as Uj)per Old Red or LowerCarboniferous, has been the subject of so much had been previously introduced by Professor Forbes, intlie Museum of Economic Geology in Jermyn Street, Lon-don, to an interesting collection of plants from these yellow FOSSIL FLORAS OF SCOTLAND. 459 beds, and had an opportunity afforded me of examining theonly ichthyic organism hitherto found associated withthem; and was struck, though I could not identify itsspecies, with its peculiarly Old Red aspect; but the evi-dence of the Cyclopterus is of course more conclusive thanthat of the fish; and we may, I think, legitimately con-clude, that in Ireland, as in our own country, it was acontemporary of the great Pterichthys {P. major)^—thehugest, and at least one of the last, of his race, — and gaveits ri
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