76 Professor Oweu on British Fossil Iteptiles. 



the individual, so as to abrogate fixity of species by a trans- 

 mutation of a lower into a higher organization, some evidence 

 of it ought surely to be obtained from an extensive and deep 

 survey of that class of animals vv^hich, whilst intermediate iu 

 organization between fishes and mammals, prevailed most on 

 the earth during the long periods that intervened between the 

 time when the only vertebrate animals were fishes, and the 

 tertiary and modern epochs, when mammals have become 

 abundant, and have almost superseded reptiles in the herbi- 

 vorous and carnivorous departments of the economy of nature. 



In accordance with this not unreasonable expectation, the 

 reptiles of the magnesian conglomerate and new red sandstone 

 ought to have been organized according to the type of the 

 most fish- like perennibranchiate Batrachians ; and the fishes of 

 the older strata, if they tended to a higher stage of develop- 

 ment, ought, upon achieving the passage to the reptilian class, 

 to have entered it at its lowest step. 



It is true, indeed, that the most characteristic reptilian re- 

 mains of the new red sandstone do belong essentially, as by their 

 double occipital condyle, their vomerine palate bones and teeth, 

 &c., to the Batrachian order ; but had the Labyrinthodonts now 

 existed, instead of ranking as the lowest members of that 

 order, they would most unquestionably have been esteemed the 

 highest ; and, as in the existing diversified order of Batrachia, 

 one family* represents fishes, a secondt serpents, a third ge- 

 nus X Chelonians, and a fourth § lizards ; so would the now lost 

 Labyrinthodonts have formed batrachian representatives of 

 the highest order of reptiles, viz. the crocodilians. Here, there- 

 fore, we find the batrachian making its first appearance un- 

 der its highest, instead of its lowest or simplest conditions of 

 structure. To use the figurative language of the transmuta- 

 tion theory, the Labyrinthodonts are degraded crocodiles, not 

 elevated fishes. 



But the hypothetical derivation of reptiles from metamor- 

 phosed fishes is more directly negatived by the fact, that the 

 batrachian type is not that under which reptiles make their first 

 appearance in the strata which succeed the coal measures. — The 



* Percunibranchiata. t Ceciliadee. % Pipii* § Salamandra. 



