LAND ANIMALS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 355 



may be observed, had previously been discovered in the Coal forma- 

 tion in Europe. 



The original specimen of these footprints Is still In the collection of 

 Sir William Logan. It is a slab of dark-coloured sandstone, glazed 

 with fine clay on the surface ; and having a series of seven footprints 

 In two rows, distant about three Inches ; the distance of the impressions 

 In each row being three or four Inches, and the individual Impressions 

 about one inch In length. They seem to have been made by the points 

 of the toes, which must have been armed with strong and apparently 

 blunt claws, and appear as If either the surface had been somewhat 

 firm, or as If the body of the animal had been partly water-borne. In 

 one place only Is there a distinct mark of the whole foot, as If the 

 animal had exerted an unusual pressure in turning or stopping sud- 

 denly. One pair of feet, the fore feet I presume, appear to have had 

 four claws ; the other pair may have had three or four, and It Is to be 

 observed that the outer toe, as in the larger footprints discovered by 

 Dr King, pi-ojects in the manner of a thumb, as In the chelrotherian 

 tracks of the Trias. No mark of the tail or belly appears. The 

 impressions are such as" may have been made by some of the reptiles 

 to be described in the sequel, as, for Instance, by Dendrerpeton 

 Acadianum. 



Attention having been directed to such marks by these observations 

 of Sir William Logan, several other discoveries of the same kind 

 were subsequently made In various parts of the province, and in 

 different members of the Carboniferous system. The first of these, 

 in order of time, was made In 1844, In beds of red sandstone and 

 shale near Tatamagouche, in the eastern part of Nova Scotia, and 

 belonging to the Upper or newer members of the Coal measures. In 

 examining these beds with the view of determining their precise 

 geological age, I found on the surface of some of them impressions 

 of worm-burrows, rain-drops, and sun-cracks, and with these, two 

 kinds of footprints, probably of reptilian animals. One kind consisted 

 of marks, or rather scratches, as of three toes, and resembling some- 

 what the scratches made by the claws of a tortoise in creeping up a 

 bank of stiff clay ; they were probably of the same nature and origin 

 with those found by Logan at Horton. The others were of very 

 different appearance. They consisted of two series of strongly marked 

 elongated impressions, without distinct marks of toes, in series four 

 inches distant from each other, and with an intervening tail mark. 

 They seem to have been produced by an animal wading in soft mud, 

 so that deep holes, rather than regular Impressions, marked its foot- 

 steps, and that In the hind foot the heel touched the surface, giving 



