238 KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



garded Archegosaurus as allied to the Crocodilia but having 

 characters of the Batrachia as were exhibited in the labyrintho- 

 donts, and on account of the geological position of the fossils 

 he supposed that Archegosaurtts would really belong with the 

 labyrinthodonts. 



Huxley in 1862 described Pholidogaster pisciformis from the 

 Carboniferous of Scotland. In the next year he distributed the 

 ancient Amphibia into the two groups, the Archegosauria and 

 the Mastodonsauria of von Meyer. In the former group he 

 placed Pholidogaster, to which it manifestly does not belong. 

 Huxley was himself doubtful as to its location, for he says: 

 "Archegosaurus, of course, takes its place among the Archego- 

 sauria ; and Pholidogaster, I suspect, must go with it, though its 

 vertebrae are far better ossified" ; and in a footnote he makes the 

 interesting statement : "It seems to me probable that the verte- 

 bral centra of Archegosaurus may really have been osseous 

 rings, such as are found in embryo frogs and salamanders," 

 which shows that he was on the right track but did not quite 

 comprehend the nature of the vertebrae of Archegosaurus. 



Our knowledge for the next few years of our history is 

 advanced but little, and that only by sundry discussions on 

 Archegosaurus. In 1866 Owen placed Archegosaurus in his 

 subclass "Dipnoa," under the order "Ganocephala." In the 

 same year Haekel retained Owen's classification, except that 

 he displaced Owen's "Dipnoa" with "Phractamphibia." Cope, 

 in 1868, retained essentially the same classification as proposed 

 by Owen. In 1874 the committee of the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science reported on the extinct Am- 

 phibia, and placed Archegosaurus by itself in group VI, the 

 Archegosauria. 



No further additions were made to our knowledge of the 

 Temnospondylia until 1875 and 1878, when Cope described 

 Cricotus from the Carboniferous of Illinois and T rimer orhachis 

 from the Permian of Texas. In the hext year Gaudry described 

 Actinodon from the Permian of France. In 1882 a decided ad- 

 vance was made in the separation by Professor Cope of the 

 rhachitomous forms such as Eryops, Actinodon, Zatrachys, Tri- 

 merorhachis and other genera, which have subsequently proven 

 to be synonyms of the genera mentioned, into a distinct group. 

 Cope proposed the term Rhachitomi for this subordinal group, 

 and designated two families, the Eryopidse and the Trimeror- 



