disaster and sudden extinction. Pompeii in this northern locality lies over Herculaneum, and Anglano over both. We cease to wonder why the higher order of animals should not have been introduced into a scene of being that had so recently arisen out of chaos, and over which the reign of death so frequently returned. In a somewhat different sense from that indicated by the poet of the "Seasons," "As yet the trembling _year_ was unconfirmed, And _winter_ oft at eve resumed the gale." Lying detached in the stratified clay of the fish-beds, there occur in abundance single plates and scales of ichthyolites, which, as they can be removed entire, and viewed on both sides, illustrate points in the mechanism of the creatures to which they belonged that cannot be so clearly traced in the same remains when locked up in stone. There is a vast deal of skilful carpentry exhibited--if carpentry I may term it--in the coverings of these ancient ichthyolites. In the commoner fish of our existing seas the scales are so thin and flexible,--mere films of horn,--that there is no particularly nice fitting required in their arrangement. The condition, too, through which portions of unprotected skin may be presented to the water, as over and between the rays of the fins, and on the snout and lips, obviates many a mechanical difficulty of the earlier period, when it was a condition, as the remains demonstrate, that no bit of naked skin, should be exposed, and when the scales and plates were formed, not of thin horny films, but of solid pieces of bone. Thin slates lie on the roof of a modern dwelling, without any nice fitting;--they are scales of the modern construction: but it required much nice fitting to make thick flagstones lie on the roof of an ancient cathedral;--_they_, on the other hand, were scales of the ancient type. Again, it requires no ingenuity whatever, to suffer the hands and face to go naked,--and such is the condition of our existing fish, with their soft skinny snouts and membranous fins; but to cover the hands with flexible steel gauntlets, and the face with such an iron mask as that worn by the mysterious prisoner of Louis XIV., would require a very large amount of ingenuity indeed; and the ancient ichthyolites of the Old Red were all masked and gauntleted. Now the detached plates and scales of the stratified clay exhibit not a few of the mechanical contrivances through which the bony coverings of these fish were made to unite--as in coats of old armor--great strength with great flexibility. The scales of the Osteolepis and Diplopterus I found nicely bevelled atop and at one of the sides; so that where they overlapped each other,--for at the joints not a needle-point could be insinuated,--the thickness of the two scales equalled but the thickness of one scale in the centre, and thus an equable covering was formed. I brought with me some of these detached scales, and they now lie fitted