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These fishes, which preceded the appearance of reptiles, present a combination of ichthyic and reptilian characters not to be found in the true members of this class, which form its bulk at present. Now these reptile-like fishes, of which gar-pikes are the living representatives, though of earlier appearance, are admittedly of higher rank than common fishes.
The sauroid fishes of the past geological ages are an example of this kind These fishes which preceded the appearance of reptiles present a combination of ichthyic and reptilian characters not to be found in the true members of this class, which form its bulk at present.
It never once crossed my mind when, in writing my little volume, the "Footprints," I had such frequent occasion to refer to my master, our great authority in ichthyic history, that he himself would have associated his name with it on the other side of the Atlantic, and referred in turn to its humble writer.
As to fossil representatives of the ichthyic type, the most ancient were not supposed before 1838 to be of a date anterior to the Coal, but they have since been traced back, first to the Devonian, and then to the Silurian rocks.
It supposes a gradual elevation in grade of the vertebrate type in the course of ages from the most simple ichthyic form to that of the placental mammalia and the coming upon the stage last in the order of time of the most anthropomorphous mammalia, followed by the human race this last thus appearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning operation as it were of one and the same series of manifestations of creative power.
The general dearth, therefore, of fish in the different members of the Eocene series, Upper, Middle, and Lower, might induce a hasty reasoner to conclude that there was a poverty of ichthyic forms during this period; but when a local accident, like the volcanic eruptions of Monte Bolca, occurs, proofs are suddenly revealed to us of the richness and variety of this great class of vertebrata in the Eocene sea.
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