The Platysomid Fishes

Abstract

I AM very sorry to find that my esteemed friend Prof. H. Alleyne Nicholson has, in the new edition of his “Manual of Palæontology” (vol. ii. p. 138, note) committed the mistake of quoting me as his authority for elevating the Platysomid fishes to the “rank of a distinct division of Ganoids.” No such proposition occurs in the unpublished paper to which he refers, which was written to follow up the views which I expressed in my account of the structure of the Palæoniscidæ (Palæontographical Society, 1877), as to the abolition of the sub order “Lepidopleuridæ,” necessitated by the demonstration of the fact that the Platysomidæ as a family are not really allied to the Pycnodontidæ, but are on the other hand so closely linked by ties of structure to the Palæoniscidæ, that, wherever the latter family is placed, thither the Platysomidæ must follow.