THE FIRST AIR-BREATHERS. 151 



first trace ever observed of batrachians in the Carboniferous 

 consisted of a series of small but well-marked footprints found 

 by the late Sir W. E. Logan in the Lower Carboniferous shales 

 of Horton Bluff, in Nova Scotia. In that year this pains- 

 taking geologist had examined the coal-fields of Pennsylvania 

 and Nova Scotia, with the view of following up his important 

 discovery of the StigmaricB, or roots of Sigillaria, as accom- 

 paniments of the coal-underclays. On his return he read a 

 paper, detailing his observations, before the Geological Society 

 ot London. In this he mentioned the footprints in question 



Fig. 122.— Caxhomiexows Scot\aotv {Eoscor/>ius carbonnrius, Meek and Worthen). 



Illinois. 



but the paper was published only in abstract, and the import- 

 ance of the discovery was overlooked for a time, the anatomists 

 evidently being shy to acknowledge the validity of the evidence 

 for a fact so unexpected. Fig. 133 is a representation of another 

 slab subsequently found in beds of the same age in Nova 

 Scotia, and which may serve to indicate the nature of Sir 

 William's discovery. In consequence of the neglect of this 

 first hint by the London geologists, the discovery of bones of 

 a batrachian by von Dechen at Saarbruck in 1844, and that of 

 footprints by King in Pennsylvania in the same year, are usually 

 represented as the first facts of this kind. My own earliest 

 discovery of reptilian bones in Nova Scotia was made in 1844, 



