3. Above is the Pterichthys,[[51]] or winged fish. We have here a fish more strikingly different to any existing species than either of the other two just passed under review. “Imagine,” says Miller, “the figure of a man rudely drawn in black on a grey ground; the head cut off by the shoulders; the arms spread at full, as in the attitude of swimming; the body rather long than otherwise, and narrowing from the chest downwards; one of the legs cut away at the hip-joint; the other, as if to preserve the balance, placed directly in the centre of the figure, which it seems to support. Such, at the first glance, is the appearance of the fossil.”[[52]]
We will now turn to the fourth and last of the singular fishes of this formation.
4. The Osteolepis,[[53]] or bony scaled fish. Here we have in the old red sandstone the first perfect specimen of a fish with pectoral, abdominal, and caudal fins, ending as the others do in the heterocercal tail. The vertebral column seems to have run on to well-nigh the extremity of the caudal fin, which we find developed chiefly on the under side. The tail was a one-sided tail. Take into account with these peculiarities such as the naked skull, jaws, and operculum,[[54]] the naked and thickly set rays, and the unequally lobed condition of tail, a body covered with scales that glitter like sheets of mica, and assume, according to their position, the parallelogramical, rhomboidal, angular, or polygonal form, a lateral line raised, not depressed, a raised bar on the inner or bony side of the scales, which, like the doubled up end of a tile, seems to have served the purpose of fastening them in their places, a general clustering of alternate fins towards the tail—and the tout ensemble must surely impart to the reader the idea of a very singular little fish.[[55]]
Most hasty and superficial is this glance through the wonders of the old red sandstone. On the economic uses of this formation, as tile-stones and paving-stones, we need not dwell; apart from this, these singular inhabitants of the seas of past ages, the mud of which, elevated and hardened, has become solid rock, tell us stories of that long since ancient time to which no poetry could do justice. Carried away from the present into those remote eras, our minds revel in the realization of scenery and inhabitants, of which now we possess only the fossil pictures. At the British Museum, we gaze with feelings approaching to repulsion on the stiff and unnatural forms of Egyptian mummies, but with what feelings of profound wonder do we look on these small fishes, so numerous that the relics of them, found in the Orkneys, may be carried away by cartloads! No number of creations can exhaust God, for in Him all fulness dwelleth. The God in whom we now live, and move, and have our being, is the same God who gave to these pre-Adamite fish their marvellous structures, minutely but fearfully and wonderfully made, and who, when their joy of life and functions of life had ceased, consigned them to a calm and peaceful grave. He is the same God who now upholds all things by the word of his power, and whom we desire to honour by the attentive and reverent perusal of his manifold works. We are tautologists; we say and do the same thing over and over again. God never repeats himself: each successive creation—and how many, extending through countless ages, does geology disclose!—only reveals some new aspect of wisdom, love, and beneficence. To the mind that cannot repose in God, we say, Study God, in his works and in his word; yea, come back to this remote sandstone era and ask of the “fishes, and they shall declare unto thee” the might and majesty, the skill and contrivance of the Almighty; and though you and I were not there, nor had Adam yet trod this blessed earth,—
“Think not, though men were none,
That heaven could want spectators, God want praise;
Millions of spiritual creatures walked the earth,
And these with ceaseless praise His works beheld.”