LAND ANIMALS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 367 



are some reasons, derived from fossil plants, for believing that in the 

 preceding Devonian period there was less of this, and consequently 

 that there may then have been a higher and more varied animal life 

 than in the Coal period.* Even in the modern Avorld also, we still find 

 local cases of this early union of dissimilar conditions. It is in the 

 swamps of Africa, at one time dry, at another inundated, that such 

 intermediate forms as Lepidosiren occur, to baffle the classificatory 

 powers of naturalists ; and it is in the stagnant unaerated waters, half 

 swamp, half lake or river, and unfit for ordinary fishes, that the semi- 

 reptilian Amia and Lepidosteus still keep up the characters of their 

 palaeozoic predecessors. 



The dentition of Dendrerpeton shows it to have been cai'nivorous in 

 a high degree. It may have captured fishes and smaller reptiles, either 

 on land or in water, and very probably fed on dead carcases as well. 

 If, as seems likely, the footprints referred to in a previous section be- 

 long to Dendrerpeton^ it must have frequented the shores, either in 

 search of garbage, or on its way to and from the waters. The occur- 

 rence of its remains in the stumps of Sigillaria, with land-snails and 

 millipedes, shows also that it crept in the shade of the woods in search 

 of food; and under the head of coprolitic matter, in a subsequent section, 

 I shall show that remains of excrementitious substances, probably of 

 this species, contain fragments attributable to smaller reptiles, and 

 other animals of the land. 



Several of the bones of the limbs remain in sufficiently good preser- 

 vation to allow of measurement of their size. I am thus enabled to 

 give the following dimensions of parts of the animal : — 



Total length of skull .... 



,, breadth of skull at the orbits . 



It would seem from these dimensions that the head was broad and 

 the trunk slender; the anterior limb, including the foot, half as long 

 again as the head, and the posterior limb rather smaller or shorter than 

 the anterior. It would thus appear that while tlie general form of the 

 body was not unlike that of Menobranchiis, the limbs were much 

 larger, and must have carried the trunk without allowing any part of 



* See the author's paper on Devonian Tlauts, Journal of the Geological Society, 

 vol. xviii., p. 328. 



