170 PALAEONTOLOGY 



the hypothesis of the Apateon being a fossil fish, he has sent 

 to Agassiz a drawing with a description of it. 



Three years later, better preserved and more instructive 

 specimens of the problematical fossil were obtained by Pro- 

 fessor von Dechen from the Bavarian coal-fields, and were 

 submitted to the examination of Professor Goldfuss of Bonn : 

 he published a quarto Memoir on them, with good figures, 

 referring them to a saurian genus which he calls Arclicgo- 

 saurus, or primaeval lizard, deeming it to be a transitional type 

 between the fish-like Batrachia and the lizards and crocodiles.* 



The estimable author, on the occasion of publishing the 

 above Memoir, transmitted to me excellent casts of the 

 originals therein described and figured. They are in the 

 museum of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, and are described 

 in my Catalogue of the Fossil Eeptiles, 4to, 1854, p. llT.f 

 One of the specimens appeared to present evidence of 

 persistent branchial arches. The osseous structure of the 

 skull, especially of the orbits, through the completed zygo- 

 matic arches, indicated an affinity to the Labyrinthodonts ; 

 but the vertebrae and numerous very short ribs, with the 

 indications of stunted swimming limbs, impressed me with 

 the conviction of the near alliance of the Arclicgosaurus with 

 the Proteus and other perennibranchiate reptiles. 



This conclusion of the affinity of Arclicgosaurus to existing 

 types of the reptilian class has been confirmed by subse- 

 quently-discovered specimens, some of which have been 

 acquired by the British Museum, others have been described 

 and figured by H. von Meyer in his Pcdoeontographica (Bd. vi., 

 2to Lief. 1857) ; more especially by his discovery of the 

 embryonal condition of the vertebra] column — i.e., of the 

 persistence of the notochord, and the restriction of ossification 



* " Archegosaurus, Fossile-Saurier aus dem Stein kohlengebirge die den 

 (Jebergang der Ichthyoden zu den Lacerten und Krokodilen bilden," p. 3. 



(Beitrage zur vorweltliclien Fauna des Stcinkohlengebirges, 4to, 1847). 

 f See also, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. iv., 1848. 



