266 THE OLDEST AIR-BREATHERS 



returned from my little excursion much richer than I had 

 hoped. 



The specimen, on furthei examination, proved somewhat 

 puzzling. I supposed it to be, most probably, the head of a 

 large ganoid fish ; but it seemed different from anything of 

 this kind with which I could compare it ; and at a distance 

 from comparative anatomists, and without sufficient means of 

 determination, I dared not refer it to anything higher in the 

 animal scale. Hoping for further light, I packed it up with 

 some other specimens, and sent it to the Secretary of the 

 Geological Society of London, with an explanatory note as to 

 its geological position, and requesting that it might be sub- 

 mitted to some one versed in such fossils. For a year or 

 two, however, it remained as quietly in the Society's collection 

 as if in its original bed in the coal mine, until attention 

 having been attracted to such remains by the discoveries 

 made by Sir Charles Lyell and myself in 1852, at the South 

 Joggins, and published in 1853,^ the Secretary or President of 

 the Society re-discovered the specimen, and handed it to Sir 

 Richard Owen, by whom it was described in December, 1853,2 

 under the name of Baphetes planiceps, which may be inter- 

 preted the "flat-headed diving animal," in allusion to the 

 flatness of the creature's skull, and the possibility that it may 

 have been in the habit of diving. 



The parts preserved in my specimen are the bones of the 

 anterior and upper part of the skull in one fragment, and 

 the teeth and palatal bones in others. These parts were 

 carefully examined and described by Owen, and the details 

 will be found in his papers referred to in the note. We 

 may merely observe here that the form and arrangement of 

 the bones showed batrachian affinities, that the surface of the 

 cranium was sculptured in the manner of the group of 



* Journal of Geological Society of London, vol. ix. 



^ Journal of Geological Society, vol. x. ; and additional notes, vol. xi. 



