orders appeared first on the stage, and not the lower or worm-like fishes; so our author argues that the transition to reptiles was not by gradual progress, as the Lamarckian hypothesis would have it, for the higher or cartilaginous fishes were predominant during the enormous period represented by the five successive formations which preceded the commencement of the age of reptiles. The subject concludes thus: —
"Geoffrey Hudson was a very short man, and Goliath of Gath a very tall one, and the gradations of the human stature lie between. But gradation is not progress; and though we find full-grown men of five feet, five feet six inches, six feet, and six feet and a half, the fact gives us no earnest whatever that the race is rising in stature, and that at some future period the average height of the human family will he somewhat between ten and eleven feet. And equally unsolid is the argument that from a principle of gradation in races would deduce a principle of progress in races. The tall man of six feet need entertain quite as little hope of rising into eleven feet, as the short man of five; nor has the fish that occasionally flies any better chance of passing into a bird, than the fish that only swims."—p. 66.
In proceeding to those discoveries for which we are peculiarly indebted to Mr. Miller, the Pterichthys, or winged fish, comes first in order, and is certainly the most interesting. In the system of Nature this strange creature would appear to be a cartilaginous fish, encased in the shell of an Echinus, the very tubercles of the shell bearing out the resemblance, and looking as though they had once served for the attachment of some armature analogous to that of the urchins. This idea seems strengthened by the opinion of Agassiz, who considers the wings of Pterichthys as weapons of defence only, like the occipital spines of the river bull-head; and capable of instantaneous erection on occasions of danger, but otherwise lying close by the creature's side. "The river bull-head, when attacked by an enemy, erects its spines at nearly right angles with the plates on its head, as if to render itself as difficult of being swallowed as possible." A first glance at the strong and seemingly sinewy arms of the Pterichthys would induce the belief that it moved with extreme velocity through the abyss of waters, but when stripped of this supposed activity by assigning another purpose to the arms, we have little more than a modified Echinus, and may suppose it invested with a similar ornamental panoply.
