60 Messrs. Embleton and Atthey on the 



exists in many fishes ; and in Owen's ' Anatomy of Verte- 

 brates/ vol. i. p. 388, we find, moreover, the following passage 

 bearing on this character, and showing that it is found also in 

 the Batrachia and the Lacertilia : — " In the Scincoids, the safe- 

 guards (Tejus), in most Iguanians, in the chameleons, and 

 many Lacertian reptiles the tooth is anchylosed by an oblique 

 surface extending from the base more or less upon the outer 

 side of the crown to an external alveolar plate of bone, the 

 inner alveolar plate not being developed ; in the frogs the 

 teeth are similarly but less firmly attached to an external 

 parapet of bone." 



In structure the teeth are labyrinthodont. 



On the other hand the skull of Loxomma, by its form and 

 size, its strength and solidity of ossification, its peculiarly 

 reticulated surface, and by the massiveness of its mandible, 

 resembles much more the skull of the Crocodilia, and especially 

 of the alligator, than that of Batrachia or Fishes. The 

 presence of limbs as paddles allies it with the orders above 

 Fishes. 



The nasal bones are a pair ; the nasal apertures being both 

 anterior and pharyngeal show that Loxomma was an air- 

 breather like the crocodiles ; and the existence of such ribs as 

 that figured in Plate VII. fig. 1 confirms this view. 



There is no anterior palatine foramen, neither are there 

 posterior palatines or pterygo-maxillary vacuities as in the 

 crocodile and alligator. 



The doubtful perforation of the upper jaw in Loxomma is 

 equally suggestive of the actual perforation of the correspond- 

 ing part in Lepidosteus, and in the old crocodile of the Nile, 

 for the reception of a tooth of the mandible when the mouth 

 is closed. 



The apertures in each parietal bone, so large in the Cro- 

 codilia, are not present in Loxomma ; but the " parietal " 

 foramen, which exists, is a character common to it and the 

 other Labyrinthodonts, to Ichthyopterygia, Sauropterygia, and 

 Anomodontia, but does not belong to Fishes. 



The temporal fossae are, in Loxomma as in Crocodiles, 

 Alligators, Tortoises, and Batrachia, placed on the sides of 

 the top of the skull, and are not arched over by bony plates 

 as in the Protopteri and Ganocephala. 



The articulations of the mandible with the skull resemble 

 the corresponding parts of the higher reptiles rather than 

 those of fishes. 



The large size and great importance of the superior maxil- 

 lary bones as compared with the premaxillaries is a decided 

 reptilian and not at all an ichthyic character. 



