In the autumn of 1832, the attention of the scientific public of Edinburgh was directed to the extraordinary character of some fossil remains obtained from the lime-quarries of Burdiehouse, a village about four miles to the south of the town. Dr. Hibbert visited the locality, and soon saw enough to excite his lively interest in its thorough investigation. The Royal Society of Edinburgh warmly supported his exertions, and by their means a large suite of specimens was eventually obtained, which the Doctor from time to time described as they were successively received. At the meeting[45] of the British Association in Edinburgh, in 1834, the specimens were exhibited before the Geological Section, and a memoir upon them read by their successful discoverer. On the conclusion of the paper, a lively discussion ensued upon the nature of the animal to which the scales and teeth had belonged. Dr. Hibbert argued, from the deeply-furrowed teeth, and the strong, massive cranial plates, that the animal must have been a reptile, and supported his assertion by no small amount of anatomical skill. In the midst of the discussion, a message was sent to the great ichthyologist of Neufchatel, who happened to be at that time busily engaged in the Zoological Section. Passing over the fossils as they lay grouped upon the table, with that quick perception for which he is so justly celebrated, Agassiz at once decided that the bones must have been those of some large and hitherto undescribed _fish_. Such a decision from such an authority produced of course no little sensation, and the naturalist was told with some surprise that the remains had just been elaborately described as those of extinct reptiles. "Reptiles!" thought Agassiz, and again his quick eye darted over the table; but the fossils would yield no other answer than what they had already given. Despite their seeming reptilian character, they were undoubtedly ichthyic, though belonging to an animal up to that time unknown. In the completed memoir which Dr. Hibbert subsequently submitted to the Royal Society, his mistake was freely acknowledged, and the remains there flourish as those of a true fish. But with this amendment a grave error of another kind was committed, though in this the Doctor seems to have been supported by the authority of Agassiz himself. The large bones, scales, and teeth of the Burdiehouse limestone, were all indiscriminately thrown into one genus, to which Agassiz gave the name of Megalichthys; and in the memoir we find the different kinds of scales and teeth described and figured without the slightest intimation or suspicion that they might possibly have belonged to different animals. The novelty of the discoveries soon attracted general attention to Dr. Hibbert's paper. It was quoted or referred to in almost every scientific work treating of general geology, while in some instances (as in Dr. Buckland's _Bridgewater Treatise_) the erroneously-named bones were re-engraved.