Identifier: oldredsandstoneo58mill (find matches)
Title: The old red sandstone; or, New walks in an old field. To which is appended a series of geological papers, read before the Royal physical society of Edinburgh
Year: 1858 (1850s)
Authors: Miller, Hugh, 1802-1856
Subjects: Geology, Stratigraphic Geology
Publisher: Boston, Gould and Lincoln New York, Sheldon and company (etc., etc.)
Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

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tion — The champi-ons in distorted postures threat. It presents us, too, with awonderful record of violent death falling at once, not on a fewindividuals, but on whole tribes. Next to the Plerichihys of the Lower Old Red I shall placeits contemporary the Coccosteus of Agassiz, a fish which, insome respects, must have somewhat resembled it. Both werecovered with an armor of thickly tubercled bony plates, andboth furnished with a vertebrated tail. The plates of the one,when found lying detached in the rock, can scarcely be dis-tmguished from those of the other : there are the same marks,as in the plates of the tortoise, of accessions of growth at theedges — the same cancellated bony structure within, tne samekind of tubercles without. The forms of the creatures them-selves, however, were essentially diffi3rent. I have comparedthe figure of the Pterichthys, as shown in some of my betterppecimens, to that of a man with the head cut off at the 48* Coccosteiis Cuspidatus Ag. ?LA TE III.
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THE OLD KED SANDSTONE. 49 shoulders, one of the legs also wanting, and the arms spreadto the full. The figure of the Coccosteiis I would compareto a boys kite. (See Plate III., fig. 1.) There is a roundedhead, a triangular body, a long tail attached to the apex ofthe triangle, and arms thin and rounded where they attach tothe body, and spreading out towards their termination likethe ancient one-sided shovel which we see sculptured on oldtombstones, or the rudder of an ancient galley.* Themanner in which the plates are arranged on the head ispeculiarly beautiful; but I am afraid I cannot adequatelydescribe them. A ring of plates, like the ring-stones of anarch, runs along what may be called the hoop of the kite ;the form of the keystone-plate is perfect; the shapes of theothers are elegantly varied, as if for ornament; and whatwould be otherwise the opening of the arch, is filled up withone large plate, of an outline singularly elegant. A singleplate, still larger than any of the other

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