During his period of office Mr. Salter prepared three Decades, with 10 plates each (8vo. size), on the Trilobites in the collection at Jermyn Street, and, in conjunction with Prof. Huxley, a Monograph on the genus Pterygotus, illustrated with sixteen folio plates. He also completed a Decade on the Echini, commenced by Prof. Forbes; and supplied a part of the palæontology to Prof. Phillip's Memoir on

Malvern.

The Palæontological portion of Prof. Ramsay's Memoir on North Wales was also written by Mr. Salter.

One result of the combination of the "Geological Survey of the United Kingdom" with the "Museum of Practical Geology" and the "Royal School of Mines," has been not only to require from the officer holding the position of Paleontologist a large amount of routine work in examining and naming specimens and preparing lists of fossils of most prodigious length in connexion with the Survey, but the duties of a Curator in arranging and naming the fossils exhibited in the Museum, and, added to all this, a series of demonstrations have to be given annually to the pupils of the School of Mines, on fossils characteristic of the various strata, with their range and distribution in time and space.

More than thirty papers by Mr. Salter, on various geological topics, are to be found in the Journal of the Geological Society; he also wrote in the "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, &c.

Four parts of a Memoir on British Trilobites, illustrated by thirty 4to. plates, and 216 pages of text, have been published by the Palæontographical Society.

In Murchison's "Siluria," and Lyell's Manual, Mr. Salter's services, with both pen or pencil, are apparent and acknowledged. Mr. Salter has also contributed to Sedgwick's Memoirs, 1844 to 1847; Sharpe's Memoirs (Geol. Proceedings); Reports of the British Association, 1844-1868 (Sections).

In the published account of the Arctic voyages of Beechey, Ommaney, and Penny, the description and correlation of the fossils was made by him. Mr. Salter has described fossils from the Himalayas, Australia, China, South Africa, Canada, Oregon, etc., etc.

A list of sixty separate papers by Mr. Salter is given in Bigsby's Thesaurus Siluricus, in the preparation of which he was also engaged. He projected, and, conjointly with Mr. Henry Woodward, prepared a Tabular view of British Fossil Crustacea, showing their range in time, which was engraved and published by Mr. J. W. Lowry, in 1865, and, but for the great expense attending the engraving, several other groups were also intended to be tabulated.

In 1865, Mr. Salter received the "Wollaston Donation Fund" from the Geological Society, in recognition of his valuable services to Palæontology, and especially for his Monograph on Trilobites, then in course of publication by the Palæontographical Society.

After his retirement from the office of Palæontologist to the Geological Survey in 1863, he was engaged at various times in arranging and naming the Paleozoic Invertebrata of the Manchester,

Leicester, Leeds, Worcester, Malvern, Taunton, and Cambridge Museum collections; he also executed numerous plates and woodcuts. A catalogue (illustrated by himself) of the Cambrian and Silurian fossils in the Woodwardian Museum was one of the last tasks which he undertook, and which remains uncompleted, as does his Monograph on the Trilobites.

It is difficult to say what combination of official conditions could have been found better suited to him than those in which he was placed. He often pictured the happiness of a post in the British Museum; but it is doubtful, had he realized his hope, whether his health would have improved. Those who knew him well, will remember how cheerful and light-hearted he was at times; he was, in many ways, remarkably like a child, fond of boyish athletic sports, a lover of Nature, fond of wild-flowers, and domestic pet animals, which he encouraged his children to keep. Anon he would be fretful and irritable, often without any reasonable cause, proving that the chronic ill-health of which he complained was certainly mental.

His staunch friends, Murchison and Sedgwick, helped him right manfully throughout, and he had many friends in the West of England and in Scotland, who gladly welcomed him to their homes, and cordially sympathized with him. But though he spoke cheerfully and hopefully after resigning his post at Jermyn-street, we have his written testimony that he regretted the step he had taken.

No one, however, who will fairly weigh the amount of valuable work done by Mr. Salter, and the large contributions he has made to our knowledge of the palæozoic rocks and the early life-forms which they contain, will deny that a man of such ability deserved some recognition in the way of pension from Government; and it is sincerely to be hoped that Mrs. Salter, with her seven children, may at least be granted some small share of the Royal bounty, as some acknowledgment of the services rendered to science by her husband. Mr. Salter is buried in Highgate Cemetery, the resting-place of several of his fellow-workers in science.

JAMES HUNT, Ph.D., F.S.A., F.R.S.L., etc.-We regret to have to record the death, on the 29th August, at the early age of thirtysix, of James Hunt, Ph.D., F.S.A., F.R.S.L., founder of the Anthropological Society of London, and its first President, an office he held during five years. Soon after the foundation of the Society in 1863, the deceased, with that spirit of enterprise which distinguished him, established the Anthropological Review, of which he was proprietor and Editor from its commencement to the current number. Whatever may be the future of Anthropology in England, the name of James Hunt will long be remembered as one of the most active and disinterested workers in that branch of science of which he was passionately fond, and in the pursuit of which he died.

ERRATUM.-In the Obituary of Mr. J. BEETE JUKES last month, p. 431, the name of Mr. A. SELWYN, his associate in the Survey of North Wales, was accidentally omitted.-EDIT.

THE

GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE.

No. LXV.-NOVEMBER, 1869.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES.

I. NOTES ON TWO ICHTHYODORULITES HITHERTO UNDESCRIBED. By Professor OWEN, F.R.S., etc.

IN

N a recent inspection of the grand collection of Fossil Fishes in the Museum of the Earl of Enniskillen at Florence Court, his lordship called my attention more particularly to two Ichthyodorulites, which he believed to be new.

I was unable to refer them to any known or named species, and, in compliance with my friend's desire, I here record a brief notice of their distinctive, and, I believe, specific characters.

The first specimen (see Woodcut, Fig. A.), was discovered and worked out of the coal-shale of Ruabon, North Wales, by Lord Enniskillen himself. It belongs to the rare genus, called Lepracanthus by his friend and fellow labourer in Palichthyology, Sir Philip Egerton,' whose intention I fulfil in dedicating the species to his lordship, under the name Lepracanthus Colei.

The generic name of this fossil fish-spine refers to the form and serial arrangement of the minute risings or short ridges on the enamelled part, which give it a resemblance to the scaled covering of a ganoid fish.

B

The more obvious arrangement of the minute scale-like risings is longitudinal, and nine rows may be counted on each side of the basal half of the ganoin, but the risings are not parallel transversely in the several rows; they project so as to lie in oblique series across the side of the spine, which adds to the resemblance above noted (see Fig. B, magnified portion). The spine is gently curved, moderately compressed, with the back or convex border rounded; the thinner concave border is armed by relatively large recurved pointed denticles, sub-compressed and strengthened by an almost Ruabon, N. Wales. ridge-like swelling along the middle of each side. These denticles

A

Lepracanthus Colei, Owen. Coal-measures,

1 See "Agassiz, Histoire des Poissons Fossiles." 4to. tom. iii. (1842).

VOL. VI.-NO. LXV.

31

are few in number compared with most similarly barbed fossil fishspines; four project from about one third of the length of the body of the spine, and not more than seven are traceable in the present specimen. The ganoin, which enamels that body, terminates as usual below in an oblique line descending from the dentate border to the thick convex border or fore part of the spine. The implanted base is also, as usual, smooth and finely striated lengthwise.

The length of the spine, as here preserved, is 2 inches; but adding the wanting point according to the indications of the rate of contraction, and from the impression in the counterpart leaf of coalshale, the entire length would be 24 inches; the greatest breadth is three lines; the thickness at that part is

line.

The soft plastic state of the carbonaceous oose in which this weapon, with probably the fish that bore it, sunk, and ultimately settled, is shown by the exquisitely beautiful impression of the ornamentation of the glittering blade which the hardened coal now retains.

Fig. A, side view of Lepracanthus Colei, nat. size. B, magnified view of part of the ganoin.

Hybodus complanatus, Ow.-This spine rests in a block of stone, from the Iguanodon-quarry of Mr. Bensted, at Maidstone, of the Neocomian or Greensand period, the latest, I believe, in which any evidence of the genus Hybodus has been detected. The sides are flatter, and join the thick hinder border at a less open angle than in most other Hybodont spines.

The sides are longitudinally ridged, but with less regularity and with more variety in the size of the ridges, than in any other Hybodi. At the summit they are fine and close set, but they slightly increase in thickness toward the front margin; they recede from each other as the spine expands and descends: the finer ridges at the hinder half of the side continue close-set along the upper half of the spine, and also for one third of the breadth of the side next the inner concave border. The thicker ridges at the lower half of the enamelled body, are reduced to three or four in number, separated by a smooth tract, along the middle third of the side, from the finer ridges: the coarser ridges near the front border become reduced to two along the basal fourth of the enamelled body, with a wide smooth or unridged interval between them and the finer ridges. The anterior border is narrow, but obtuse. Along the middle of the broad flattened hinder border, a series of short strong recurved denticles arms the very low or open angle at which the halves of the hinder border meet; there are about thirty denticles along this angle they are thick, triangular, two lines across the base, nearly three lines in length, pointed. The enamelled body of this spine is slightly recurved.

From Hybodus reticulatus (and from Hybodus curtus, which is the second shorter spine of H. reticulatus),' the present species differs in

1 This fact is shown in the rare specimen with teeth, integument, and both spines of Hybolus reticulatus in the Museum at Florence Court, where AGASSIZ recognised his Hybodus curtus in the second smaller spine, on his last visit to Ireland.