18 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



of species of Amphibians, Stegocephalians for the most part belonging 

 to the suborders Microsauria and Labyrinthodontia. The majority of 

 these fossils were collected by Sir William Dawson, whose writings on 

 the air-breathers of this period have made the Coal Measures of Nova 

 Scotia famous as a palseontological collecting ground. 



4. Lower Carboniferous fauna. — In the Lower Carboniferous 

 we have a forecast only of the terrestrial life of the Upper Carboniferous 

 in the tracks of Amphibians preserved in the rocks of ISTova Scotia. An 

 Elasmobranch or Chimseroid fish is indicated by a spine from Cape, 

 Breton island. Both of the great orders Crossopterygii and Actinop- 

 terygii are represented, the first by a single genus and species of the 

 family of Rhizodontidge, the second by three Palaeoniscid genera. 



The ichthyodorulite Gyracanthus magnificus is a spine of large 

 size from Cape Breton to be seen in the Provincial Museum of Xova 

 Scotia at Halifax. Strepsodus hardingi was named and figured by 

 Dawson in 1868, but with little description; lately Dr. 0. P. Hay, of 

 the American Museum of Natural History, New York, has more fully 

 characterized the sipecies, his observations being limited to the scales. 



Of the Chondrosteans (Ganoids) we have Bhadinichthys alherli, 

 U. cairnsii, B. modulus, Elonichthys hrowni and Acrolepis? hortonensis, 

 the first four from Albert county. New Brunswick, the last one from 

 Horton bluff. Nova Scotia. The tracks having the names Hylopus 

 hardingi, H. logani and Palœosauropus antiquior are all from Nov.i 

 Scotia. Dr. G. F. Matthew has, in a paper, read before this Society 

 at its last annual meeting, and entitled " An attempt to classify Palaeozoic 

 batrachian footprints," aimed at reducing to some degree of order the 

 confusion in which he has found the " generic" grouping of the tracks 

 of Carboniferous age in Canada and the United States. The classifica- 

 tion suggested by Dr. Matthew is based upon the number of the toe- 

 marks preserved. Dr. R. S. Lull of Amherst, Mass., has also been 

 working along somewhat similar lines, having devoted some time to 

 the study of the footprints of dinosaurs in the Triassic rocks of the 

 Connecticut valley^ with most interesting and important results. 



5. Millstone Grit footprints. — In the Millstone Grit the only 

 indication of vertebrate life so far discovered in C'an:;da is the well- 

 preserved impressions of footprints primarily called Sauropus unguifer. 

 A slab having large and particularly distinct footmarks of this "species" 

 fvvas collected by Sir Sandford Fleming, who presented the track itself 



^ Fossil footprints of the Jura-Trias of North America, by Richard Swann 

 Lull, Ph.D. Memoirs Boston Society Natural History, vol. 5, p. 461, April, 

 :.1904. 



