In the Red Beds of Texas 251 



Museum, may be in the lot sent to Munich, and vice 

 versa. 



On the nineteenth, I found the nearly perfect skull 

 of a new species, and on the twentieth, another very 

 fine skull near the locality from which I had secured 

 the many fragments a day or two before. It was a 

 skull of the great salamander, Eryops megacepha- 

 lus Cope. There were six pairs of large teeth in 

 the roof of the mouth, and a single row of various 

 sizes in the mandibles. Some of the points had 

 been broken off and were lost. The skull is over 

 twenty inches long. All the bones are beautifully 

 sculptured on the external surface. A few years 

 before I had found a nearly complete skeleton of 

 this creature, some twelve feet in length, lying at 

 right angles to the Chisholm Trail. It was preserved 

 in hard concretions, and had weathered out on the 

 slope of a hill. The feet of countless cattle, just 

 starting out on their weary journey for Kansas and 

 the North, had worn away the solid siliceous 

 envelope to the bones. 



How the salamander tribe has degenerated since 

 the days of these powerful creatures! Supplied 

 with both gills and lungs, they dominated land and 

 water, and increasing and multiplying in the tropical 

 atmosphere, filled the swamps and bayous of this 

 region. To-day we pull from some well or spring a 

 weak creature called a mud puppy, and it is hard to 



