LONE BURIALS IN THE COAL LANDS. 177 



tional sense. Contiguous to them in earlier time, lived only 

 water-breathing fishes; next following them in time, were the 

 air breathing reptiles. Here you notice a certain succession 

 in geological history which is reproduced in the life-time of 

 the individual amphibian. Why this parallelism? What 

 causes it ? I shall try to answer these questions in due time. 

 For the present we only stick a pin. 



Let us look a little more closely at some of these Coal 

 Measure Amphibians. At Lin ton, Ohio, and Morris, Illinois, 

 and at the Joggins in Nova Scotia, we find their blackened 

 bones in greatest abundance. There is one type in which the 

 animal was but a few inches long and had the shape and 

 aspect of a salamander that is, with a long tail and four 

 limbs. Another type was similar, but was covered with scales 

 or small bony plates. Still another had no limbs, or at most 

 only two, and the form was long and snake-like. All this is 

 ascertained from the ruins of skeletons found in the Coal 

 Measure shales. 



The most characteristic and striking of all Coal Measure 

 types of animals was the Lab-y-rinih'-o-dont. In size, some were 

 as large as an ox, and larger. The head of one species was 

 three feet long and nearly two feet broad. The teeth of Laby- 

 rinthodonts, like those of all Amphibians, were conical, but 

 on making a cross section, the cement and dentine the two 

 substances of which the tooth is composed, are found intri- 

 cately infolded in a labyrinthine fashion, and hence the name 

 of this type. In some of the Labyrinthodonts, the figure was 

 somewhat frog-like, with hind limbs much the largest. Whether 

 they practiced leaping we do not know. That they sometimes 

 walked as quadrupeds is certain, for in some instances, their 

 footprints have been preserved on the surface of sandstones. 

 They were found, for instance, near Greensburg, Pennsyl- 

 vania, and also in other American localities. The print of 

 the hind foot is four-toed, with a thumb standing out at right 

 angles ; and the appearance is so much like that of the human 

 hand, that when the animal was only known from its foot- 

 prints, it was named Cheir-o-the '-ri-um or " hand- beast." In 



