354 THE CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM. 



aware, failed to do justice to this discovery, I shall notice it here in 

 detail. In the year above mentioned, Sir William, then Mr Logan, 

 examined the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, with the 

 view of studying their structure, and extending the application of the 

 discoveries as to Stigmaria underclays which he had made in the 

 Welsh coal-fields. On his return to England, he read a paper on 

 these subjects before the Geological Society of London, in which he 

 noticed the discovery of reptilian footprints at Horton Bluff. The 

 specimen was exhibited at the meeting of the Society, and was, I 

 believe, admitted on the high authority of Prof. Owen, to be probably 

 reptilian. Unfortunately, Sir William's paper appeared only in 

 abstract in the Transactions ; and in this abstract, though the foot- 

 prints are mentioned, no opinion is expressed as to their nature. Sir 

 William's own opinion is thus stated in a letter to me, dated June 

 1843, when he was on his way to Canada, to commence the survey 

 which has since developed so astonishing a mass of geological facts : — 



" Among the specimens which I carried from Horton Bluff, one is 

 of very high interest. It exhibits the footprints of some reptilian 

 animal. Owen has no doubt of the marks being genuine footprints. 

 The rocks of Horton Bluff are below the gypsum of that neighbour- 

 hood ; so that the specimen in question (if Lyell's views are coiTect*) 

 comes from the very bottom of the coal series, or at any rate very 

 low down in it, and demonstrates the existence of reptiles at an earlier 

 epoch than has hitherto been determined ; none having been previously 

 found below the magnesian limestone, or, to give it Murchison's new 

 name, the ' Permian era.' " 



This extract is of interest, not merely as an item of evidence in 

 relation to the matter now in hand, but as a mark in the progress of 

 geological investigation. For the reasons above stated, the important 

 discovery thus made in 1841, and published in 1842, was overlooked ; 

 and the discovery of reptilian bones by Von Dechen, at Saarbruck, 

 in 1844, and that of footprints by Dr King in the same year, in 

 Pennyslvania, have been uniformly referred to as the first observations 

 of this kind. This error I now desire to correct, not merely in the 

 interest of truth, but also in that of my friend Sir William Logan, and 

 of my native province of Nova Scotia ; and I trust that henceforth 

 the received statement will be, that the first indications of the existence 

 of reptiles in the coal period were obtained by Logan, in the Lower 

 Coal formation of Nova Scotia, in 1841. Insects and arachnidans, it 



* Sir Charles Lyell had then just read a paper announcing his discovery that the 

 gypsiferous system of Nova Scotia is Lower Carboniferous, in which he mentions the 

 footprints referred to as being reptilian. 



