PRIMEVAL SALAMANDERS. 75 



donsaur (Fig. 21), while many of the smaller forms 

 played the part of the modern Salamanders and 

 Lizards. Some other peculiar types developed ex- 

 tremely attenuated and elongated bodies, with the 

 partial or complete loss of their limbs, and thus 

 simulated the Blind- worms and Snakes of the present 

 day; so that it would appear that all the places in 

 Nature's economy now occupied by Eeptiles and Amphi- 

 bians, were as fully filled in those early epochs of the 

 earth's history by these primitive creeping creatures. 



That the Salamanders of the present day are directly 

 descended from the Primeval Salamanders there can 

 be no reasonable doubt. Indeed, if we were to take 

 one of the Primitive Salamanders in which the skull, 

 instead of being of the crocodile-like shape of the one 

 shown in Fig. 21, were of the shape of a cheese-knife 

 (parabolic), and were to make slits in the roof of this 

 skull, to remove the sculpture from the same, and 

 likewise to get rid of the ventral armour, and to 

 slightly modify the structure of the back-bone, we 

 should have a creature almost or quite indistinguish- 

 able from the existing Giant Salamander. We have 

 already made allusion to the signs of a relationship ex- 

 hibited by the Primitive Salamanders to the Crocodiles 

 and the Fish-Lizards, but we have yet to mention 

 indications of a kinship of far deeper interest and 

 importance. In a later chapter reference will be made 

 to that group of extinct Secondary Eeptiles, known as 

 Anomodonts, which are so remarkable as exhibiting 

 unmistakable indications of affinity in respect to the 



