88 EXTINGD MONS#ERS 
admit, but useful, because it partly serves to describe them. 
Scientific men are said to be very fond of long Latin and Greek 
names, but such can hardly be avoided ; and there is this to be 
said for them—that the names they use are much more exact 
than the popular ones by which plants and animals are com- 
monly known, and, moreover, they often convey a great deal of 
information in a brief manner. Now, the name given to the 
creatures we are about to describe is Labyrinthodonts. 
It was Sir Richard Owen who first accurately described the 
fossil amphibians, and they received this name from him. Let 
us see what the name means and how it applies. Sir Richard 
Owen’s acquaintance with these remarkable forms of ancient life 
began in the year 1840, when he first examined certain teeth from 
the New Red Sandstone of Coton End quarry, Warwickshire. 
In external character these fragmentary teeth corresponded 
with those which had been previously discovered in Germany 
(in Wiirtemberg) by Professor Jaeger, and which had been called 
by him Mastodonsaurus. This name was not a happy one, 
because it suggested an association with an extinct elephant, 
the Mastodon, with which this amphibian, it is hardly necessary 
to say, had no connection, real or imaginary. Owen examined 
the teeth of the fossils from Germany, as well as those from 
Warwickshire, and found that, when cut across into transverse 
sections for the microscope, they revealed a very remarkable and 
complicated structure; the whole of the internal portion was 
seen to be made up of a complex series of foldings, forming a 
peculiar structure, suggesting a labyrinth—the external layer of 
cement belonging to the tooth converging in numerous folds 
towards the pulp-cavity. And so the name Labyrinthodonts 
reminds us that all, or nearly all, the fossil animals included 
under the above general term possess teeth having this 
