THE CARBONIFEROUS AGE. 143 



this in one only out of more than sixty beds in which 

 erect trees have been found. Bat these hollow trees 

 must be filled up in order to preserve their contents ; 

 and as inundation and subsequent decay have been the 

 grave-diggers for the reptiles, so inundations filled up 

 their graves with sand, to be subsequently hardened 

 into sandstone, burying up at the same time the newer 

 vegetation which had grown upon the former surface. 

 The idea that something interesting might be found in 

 these erect stumps, first occurred to Sir C. Lyell and 

 the writer while exploring the beautiful coast cliffs 

 of Western Nova Scotia in 1851; and it was in ex- 

 amining the fragments scattered on the beach that 

 we found the bones of the first Carboniferous reptile 

 discovered in America, and the shell of the oldest 

 known land snail. 



These were not, however, the earliest known in- 

 stances of Carboniferous reptiles. In 1841, Sir William 

 Logan found footprints of a reptile at Horton Bluff, in 

 Nova Scotia, in rocks of Lower Carboniferous age. 

 In 1844, Von Dechen found reptilian bones in the coal- 

 field of Saarbruck ; and in the same year Dr. King 

 found reptilian footprints in the Carboniferous of 

 Pennsylvania. Like Robinson Crusoe on hia desert 

 island, we saw the footprints before we knew the 

 animals that produced them; and the fact that there 

 were marks on a slab of shale or sandstone that must 

 have been made by an animal walking on feet, was as 

 clear and startling a revelation of the advent of a new 

 and higher form of life, as were the footprints of Man 



