s about the _Coccosteus_ that
scarce less excited my wonder than the general form of the
_Pterichthys_, and which, when I first ventured to describe them, were
regarded by the higher authorities in Palaeontology as mere blunders on
the part of the observer. I have, however, since succeeded in
demonstrating that, if blunders at all--which I greatly doubt, for
Nature makes very few--it was Nature herself that was in error, not the
observer. In this strange _Coccostean_ genus, Nature _did_ place a group
of opposing teeth in each ramus of the lower jaw, just in the line of
the symphysis--an arrangement unique, so far as is yet known, in the
vertebrate division of creation, and which must have rendered the mouth
of these creatures an extraordinary combination of the horizontal mouth
proper to the vertebrata, and of the vertical mouth proper to the
crustaceans. It was favourable to the integrity of my work of
restoration, that the press was not waiting for me, and that when
portions of the creatures on which I wrought were wanting, or plates
turned up whose places I was unable to determine, I could lay aside my
self-imposed task for the time, and only resume it when some new-found
specimen supplied me with the materials requisite for carrying it on.
And so the restorations which I completed in 1840, and published in
1841, were found, by our highest authorities in 1848, after they had
been set aside for nearly six years, to be essentially the true ones
after all. I see, however, that one of the most fanciful and monstrous
of all the interim restorations of _Pterichthys_ given to the
world--that made by Mr. Joseph Dinkel in 1844 for the late Dr. Mantell,
and published in the "Medals of Creation," has been reproduced in the
recent illustrated edition of the "Vestiges of Creation." But the
ingenious author of that work could scarce act prudently were he to
stake the soundness of his hypothesis on the integrity of the
restoration. For my own part, I consent, if it can be shown that the
_Pterichthys_ which once lived and moved on this ancient globe of ours
ever either rose or sunk into the _Pterichthys_ of Mr. Dinkel, freely
and fully to confess, not only the possibility, but also the
_actuality_, of the transmutation of both species and genera. I am
first, however, prepared to demonstrate, before any competent jury of
Palaeontologists in the world, that not a single plate or scale of Mr.
Dinkel's restoration represents those of the