Coal' Formation Reptiles. 11 



sidered by Goldfuss to be saurians, but Herman von Meyer 

 regards them as most nearly allied to the Labyrinthodon, 

 and therefore connected with the batrachians as well as the 

 lizards. The remains of the extremities leave no doubt that 

 they were quadrupeds, " provided," says Von Meyer, " with 

 hands and feet terminating in distinct toes ; but these limbs 

 were weak, serving only for swimming or creeping.'' The 

 same anatomist has pointed out certain points of analogy 

 between their bones and those of the Proteus anguinus ; and 

 Prof. Owen has observed to me that they make an approach 

 to the Proteus in the shortness of their ribs.* 



Even before any intelligence of these European discoveries 

 had reached me, I had satisfied myself of the genuineness of 

 the reptilian foot-prints, first observed in 1844 by Dr King 

 at Greensburg in Pennsylvania, and which I examined care- 

 fully in his company in 1846. t They occur as casts on the 

 lower side of slabs of sandstone, in the midst of the coal- 

 measures, and were evidently made by a large air-breathing 

 animal, walking over soft mud which afterwards dried and 

 cracked in consequence of shrinking. This American fossil 

 appears to have been a much broader animal than the Euro- 

 pean triassic Cheirotherium and of a different genus. Its 

 stratigraphical position is unequivocal, as it is imbedded in 

 coal-measures containing impressions of Lepidodendron, 

 Sigillaria, and Stigmaria, some of the plants being specifi- 

 cally identical with those of the European coal. I alluded 

 in my last Anniversary Address to other foot-prints of a 

 large reptile, supposed to be of considerably older date, 

 found in 1849 by Mr Isaac Lea, in red sandstone referred to 

 the Devonian period, at Pottsville, near Philadelphia. These 

 appear to be referable to a diff^erent species, and have been 

 lately shewn by Prof. H. D. Rogers to belong to the lowest 

 part of the carboniferous series, and are therefore not much 

 more ancient than the foot-prints of Greensburg, above 

 mentioned. 



In the course then of the last six years, memorials of rep- 



* Goldfuss, Neue Jenaische Lit. Zeit. 1848 ; and Von Meyer, Qaart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, vol. iv., Part 2, p. 61. 



t See the Author's Second Visit to the United States, vol. ii., p. 305. 



