[LAMBE] PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 5 
in Ontario and Manitoba. The species Scawmenacia curta, a Dipnoan 
of the order Sirenoidei, described by Whiteaves from beautifully pre- 
served specimens from Scaumenac, as its name implies, is of special 
interest. Another form from the same locality is the Crossopterygian 
Teleostome Eusthenopteron foordi, Whiteaves no doubt familiar to all 
through the well known figure to be seen now in most paleontological 
text-books. Cheirolepis canadensis also described by Whiteaves from 
Scaumenac marks the beginning of the Actinopterygian fishes. 
These then are the principal known forms from the Devonian, 
marking a gradual and great advance from the simplest of the Ostra- 
coderms to the first of the Chondrostei the earliest of the Actinopterygii. 
In the next succeeding period, that of the Carboniferous, land 
vertebrates appear for the first time, at least we know of them as early 
as the Lower Carboniferous from tracks which they left in what was 
then mud or sand. Some of the older types of fishes persist, others 
have become extinct, whilst new forms appear. 
{n the Lower Carboniferous the dominant fishes are the Chondro- 
stean Actinopterygii of the family Palæoniscidæ of which a number of 
genera are represented by very perfectly preserved specimens in the 
bituminous shales of Albert and Westmorland counties, New Bruns- 
wick. This family was first made known to us by its earliest member 
Cheirolepis, already mentioned, of the Upper Devonian of Scaumenac 
bay. The Palzoniscid genus Acrolepis occurs at Horton bluff, Nova 
Scotia, in rocks synchronous with the Albert shales of New Brunswick. 
At Horton bluff as well as at Pictou, N.S., remains have been found 
of the typical Carboniferous genus Strepsodus, a Crossopterygian of 
the family Rhizodontidæ. The Chimeroidei are uncertainly repre- 
sented by Ichthyodorulites from Cape Breton, N.S., described under 
the name Gyracanthus. 
The most interesting feature of the Lower Carboniferous, however, 
from an evolutionary standpoint, is the advent of land animals, the 
first evidence of which we have in the batrachian footprints described 
under the names Hylopus, Palæosauropus and Megapezia, from rocks 
of this age in Nova Scotia. Let us hope that in time we shall know 
something definite of the animals responsible for these footmarks and 
discover remains associated with the tracks. 
Later in the Carboniferous, in the Millstone Grit of Nova Scotia, 
we again find footprints, this time of large size, with impressions sug- 
gesting claws. This track, the Pseudobradypus unguifer (Dawson), is 
the only record we have of vertebrate life at this geological horizon. 
‘Coming to the Coal Measures we are confronted with a large and 
varied fauna of Stegocephalian Amphibians, early land-dwellers which 
breathed, at least when adult, by means of lungs. Besides these pre- 
