184 1'AI..K<»XT(.I.im;v 



Bed by the form and proportions of the skull, and by the 

 relative position and size of the orbital, nasal, and temporal 

 cavities. 



Genus Baphetes, Ow. 



Sp. Baplietes planieeps. — In January 1854 the writer com- 

 municated to the Geological Society of London a description 

 of part of a fossil cranium of an animal, from the Pictou coal, 

 Nova Scotia, measuring 7 inches across the orbit. From the 

 characters then specified, the fossil was determined to be the 

 fore part of a skull of a sauroid Batrachian of the extinct family 

 of the Labyrinthodonts. It agreed with them in the number, 

 size, and disposition of the teeth ; in the proportions and mode 

 of connection of the premaxillaries, maxillaries, nasals, pre- 

 frontals and frontals ; and in the resultant peculiarly broad 

 and depressed character of the skull, the bones of which also 

 present the same well-marked external sculpturing as in the 

 Labyrinthodonts : and amongst the genera that have been 

 established in that family, the form of the end of the muzzle, 

 or upper jaw, in the Pictou coal specimen, best accorded with 

 that in the Ccqritosaurus and Metopias of Von Meyer and 

 Burmeister. But the orbits had been evidently larger and 

 of a different form than in the reptiles so called ; and, for the 

 convenience of distinction and reference, it was proposed to 

 name the fossil Baphetes planieeps (JSanru, I dip or dive), in 

 reference to the depth of its position and the shape of its head 



Being thus introduced at the carboniferous period to the 

 labyrinthodont order, which attained its fall development in 

 the triassic period, the more decisive evidences and typical 

 illustrations of that extinct group of reptiles will next be 

 described. 



Genus Labyrinthodon, Ow. 



At the period of the deposition of the new red sandstone, 

 in the present counties of Warwick and Cheshire, the shores 

 of the ancient sea, which were then formed by that sandy 



