1853.] OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. 283 
away, having been afterwards cemented together by mud and sand 
stained black by carbonaceous matter. Whether the reptile crept 
into the hollow tree while its top was still open to the air, or whether 
it was washed in with mud during a flood, or in whatever other man- 
ner it entered, must be matter of conjecture. Foot-prints of two 
reptiles of different sizes have been observed by Dr. Harding and 
Dr. Gesner on ripple-marked flags of the lower coal measures in 
Nova Scotia, evidently made by quadrupeds walking on the beach, 
or out of the water, just as the recent Menopoma is sometimes ob- 
served to do. Other reptilian foot-prints of much larger size had 
been previously noticed (as early as 1844) in the coal of Pennsyl- 
vania by Dr. King ; and in Europe three or four instances of skeletons 
of the same class of animals have been obtained, but the present is 
the first example of any of their bones having been met with in 
America in rocks of higher antiquity than the Trias. It is hoped how- 
ever that other instances will soon come to light, when the contents 
of upright trees, so abundant in Nova Scotia, have been systematically 
explored; for in such situations the probability of discovering ancient 
air-breathing creatures seems greater than in ordinary subaqueous 
deposits. Nevertheless we must not indulge too sanguine expec- 
tations on this head, when we recollect that no fossil vertebrata of a 
higher grade than fishes, nor any land-shells, have as yet been met 
with in the Oolitic coal-field of the James River, near Richmond, 
Virginia, a coal-field which has been worked extensively for three- 
quarters of acentury- The coal alluded to is bituminous, and as a 
fuel resembles the best of the ancient coal of Nova Scotia and Great 
Britain. The associated strata of sand-stone and shale contain 
prostrate zamites and ferns, and erect calamites and equiseta, which 
last evidently remain in the position where they grew in mud and 
sand. Whether the age of these beds be Oolitic as Messrs. W. B. 
Rogers and Lyell have concluded, or Upper Triassic as some other 
geologists suspect, they still belong clearly to an epoch when saurians 
and other reptiles flourished abundantly in Europe ; and they there- 
fore prove that the preservation of ancient terrestrial surfaces even 
in secondary rocks does not imply, as we might have anticipated, 
conditions the most favourable to our finding therein creatures of 
a higher organization than fishes. 
In breaking up the rock in which the reptilian bones were en- 
‘tombed, a small fossil body resembling a land shell of the genus 
Pupa, was detected. As such it was recognized by Dr. Gould of 
Boston, and afterwards by M. Deshayes of Paris, both of whom 
carefully examined its form and striation. When parts of the 
surface were subsequently magnified 250 diameters, by Professor 
Quekett of the College of Surgeons, they were seen to exhibit ridges 
and grooves undistinguishable from those belonging to the striation 
of living species of land-shells. The internal tissue also of the shell 
displayed, under the microscope, the same prismatic and tubular 
arrangements which characterize the shells of living mollusca, 
