8 AIR-BREATHERS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 



The specimen, on further examination, proved somewhat puz- 

 zling. ' I supposed it to be, most probably, the head of a large 

 ganoid fish ; but it seemed different from any thing of this kind 

 with which I could compare it ; and at a distance from compara- 

 tive anatomists, and without sufficient means of determination, I 

 dared not refer it to anything higher in the animal scale. Hop- 

 ing for further light, I packed it up with some other specimens, 

 and sent it to the Secretary of the Geological Society of London, 

 with an explanatory note as to its geological position, and request- 

 ing that it might be submitted to some competent osteologist for 

 examination. For a year or two however, it remained as quietly 

 in the Society's collection as if in its original bed in the coal mine, 

 until attention having been attracted to such remains by the dis- 

 coveries made by Sir Charles Lyell and myself in 1852, at the South 

 Joggins, and published in 1853,* the Secretary or President of the 

 Society re-discovered the specimen, and handed it to Prof. Owen, 

 by whom it was described in Dec, 1853,f under the name of 

 JBaphetes planiceps, which may be interpreted the " fiat-headed- 

 diving animal," in allusion to the flatness of the creature's skull, 

 and the possibility that it may have been in the habit of diving. 



The parts preserved in my specimen are the bones of the an- 

 terior and upper part of the skull in one fragment, and the teeth 

 and palatal bones in others. With respect to the former, Prof. 

 Owen recognizes in it the premaxillary (p.) (Fig. 1) and maxillary 

 bones, (m.) both presenting traces of the sockets of teeth, which 

 appear to be in a single series ; but other fragments show that in 

 part at least, they were in double series. The central portion of the 

 skull and part of the orbits are made up of the nasals, (n.) the 

 frontal (fr.) and the prefrontal (pf.) in a manner characteristic 

 of the Labyrinthodont reptiles, and not of fishes. The upper sur- 

 face of the bone, seen in some detached fragments, as in Fig. 4, has 

 a pitted surface, like that of the stone of a peach, as is the case 

 also in the Labyrinthodonts. In sections under the microscope, 

 the bone shows vascular canals and small rounded bone-cells, a 

 structure observed, in Labyrinthodon, and in some of the larger 

 Saurians (Figs. 2 and 8). The teeth are conical, and somewhat 

 curved, the outer series from a line to two lines in diameter, and 

 the inner series three lines or more (Figs. 3 and 5). They are 



* Journal of Geological Society of London, vol. ix. 



f Journal of Geological Society, vol. z ; and additional notes, vol. xi. 



