Fleming, instead of stating that the scales were at all similar, had stated very pointedly that they were entirely different; and not only had he described them as different, but he had also _figured_ them as different, and had placed the figures side by side, that the difference might be the better seen. To the paper of the Professor, which contained this statement, and to which these figures were attached, Dr. Anderson referred, as "read before the Wernerian Society;"--he quoted from it in the Professor's words--he drew some of the more important facts of his own paper from it--in his late Essay on the Geology of Fife he has availed himself of it still more largely, though with no acknowledgment; it has constituted, in short, by far the most valuable of all his discoveries in connection with the Old Red Sandstone, and apparently the most minutely examined; and yet, so completely did he fail to detect Professor Fleming's carefully drawn distinction between the scales of the _Holoptychius_ and those of its contemporary, that when Agassiz, misled apparently by the Doctor's own statement, had set himself to show that the scaly giant of the formation could have been no sturgeon, the Doctor had the passage in which the naturalist established the fact transferred into a Fife newspaper, with, of course, the laudable intention of preventing the Fife public from falling into the _absurd mistake_ of Professor Fleming. There seems to be something rather inexplicable in all this; but there can be little doubt Dr. Anderson could satisfactorily explain the whole matter without once referring to the _oyster shells_ of Clashbennie. It is improbable that he could have wished or intended to injure the reputation of a gentleman to whose freely-imparted instructions he is indebted for much the greater portion of his geological skill--whose remarks, written and spoken, he has so extensively appropriated in his several papers and essays--and whose character is known far beyond the limits of his country, for untiring research, philosophic discrimination, and all the qualities which constitute a naturalist of the highest order. Dr. Johnston, of Berwick, in his _History of British Zoöphytes_, (a work of an eminently scientific character,) justly "ascribes to the labors and writings" of Professor Fleming "no small share in diffusing that taste for Natural History which is now abroad." And as an interesting corroboration of the fact, I may state, that Dr. Malcolmson, of Madras, lately found an elegant Italian translation of _Fleming's Philosophy of Zoölogy_, high in repute among the elite of Rome. Lest it should be supposed I do Dr. Anderson injustice in these remarks, I subjoin the grounds of them in the following extracts from professor Fleming's paper in _Cheek's Journal_, and from the paper in _Jameson's New Edinburgh Journal_, in which the Doctor purports to give a digest of the former, without once referring, however, to the periodical in which it is to be found:--