AIR-BREATHERS OP THE COAL PERIOD. 11 



producer! by an animal of the type of Baphetes. On the other 

 hand that there were large swimming reptiles, seems established by 

 the recent discovery of the vertebrae of Eosaurus Acadianus, at 

 the Joggins, by Mr. Marsh.* The locomotion of Baphetes must 

 have been vigorous and rapid, but it may have been effected both 

 on land and in water, and either by feet or tail, or both. 



With the nature of its habitat vre are better acquainted. The 

 area of the Albion Mines coal field was somewhat exceptional in 

 its character. It seems to have been a bay of indentation in the 

 Silurian land, separated from the remainder of the coal-field by a 

 high shingle beach, now a bed of conglomerate. Owing to this 

 circumstance, while in the other portions of the Nova Scotia coal 

 field, the beds of coal are thin, and alternate with sandstones and 

 shales, at the Albion Mines a vast thickness of almost unmixed 

 vegetable matter has been deposited, constituting the 'main seam' 

 of thirty-eight feet thick.and the 'deep seam' twenty-four feet thick, 

 as well as still thicker beds of highly carbonaceous, shale. But, 

 though the area of. the Albion coal measures was thus separated, 

 and preserved from marine incursions, it must have been often sub- 

 merged, and probably had connection with the sea, through rivers 

 or channels cutting the enclosing beach. Hence beds of earthy 

 matter occur in it, containing remains of large fishes. One of the 

 most important of these is that known as the " Holing stone," a 

 band of black highly carbonaceous shale, coaly matter, and clay 

 ironstone, occurring in the main seam, about five feet below its 

 roof, and varying in thickness from two inches to nearly two feet. 

 It was from this band, that the rubbish-heap, in which I found the 

 skull of Baphetes planiceps, was derived. It is a laminated bed, 

 sometimes hard and containing much ironstone, in other places 

 soft and shaly : but always black and carbonaceous, and often with 

 layers of coarse coal, though with few fossil plants retaining their 

 forms. It contains large round flat scales and flattened curved 

 teeth, which I attribute to a fish of the genus Rhizodus, resem- 

 bling, if not identical with, R. lancifer, Newberry. "With these are 

 double pointed shark-like teeth, and long cylindrical spines of a 

 species of Z>iplodus, which I have named D. acinaces.\ There 

 are also shells of the minute Spirorbis, so common in the coal 

 measures of other parts of Nova Scotia, and abundance of frag- 



* Silliman's Journal, 1859. 



f Supplement to Acadian Geology, pp. 43 and 50. 



