LAND PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 



57 



an impression from a foot, as certifying by what or whose foot 

 the impression was made, is acknowledged in judicial proce- 

 dure ; and often has this kind of evidence fixed the opinion 

 of judge and jury when every other has failed. 



So much being premised, we proceed to remark that the 

 earliest discovered traces of a reptilian population of the car- 

 bonigenous era consist of the mere footmarks of certain animals 

 of that class upon the surfaces of a coarse-grained sandstone 

 amongst the coal-beds of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania. 1 

 From an illustrated account of them in the American Journal 

 of Arts and Sciences (April, 1845), it appears that these foot- 

 marks exhibit a ball, with five toe-marks, circular and 

 elongated, placed in radiating fashion before it. In similar 

 strata at another place, are 

 footsteps of a different kind, 

 resembling the human hand, 

 with the rudiment of a sixth 

 toe, at the side opposite that 

 presenting what passes for 

 the thumb. More recently, 

 actual remains of reptiles 

 have been discovered in the 

 coal formation in Bavaria. 



They are referred to a spe- 

 cies to which the general 

 name of Archegosaurus has 

 been given, and which M. 

 Von Meyer considers as hav- 

 ing been allied to the Laby- 

 rinthodonts of a higher and 

 later formation. The re- 

 mains of one individual in- 

 dicate an animal between 

 three and four feet long ; 

 the teeth seem to have been 

 of an advanced character for the class, that is, fixed in dis- 

 tinct alveoli, and the animals were furnished with weak limbs 

 serving only to swim or creep. It may be remarked that the 



1 [In the coal measures of Nova Scotia, within a fossil tree, has bee n 

 discovered a fragment of "a Sauroid Batrachian, of the extinct family 

 of the Labyrinthodonts," according with Capitosaurus, from the Bunter 

 sandstone of Bernburg, and named by Professor Owen Baphetes Pla- 

 niceps; also " a probable land-shell of the family Helicidce." 1854 .] 



Archegosaurus minor. 



