AIR-BREATHERS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 5 



same year, in Pennsylvania, have been uniformly referred to as the 

 first observations of this kind. This error I now desire to correct 

 not merely in the interest of truth, but also in that of my friend Sir 

 William Logan, and of my native province of Nova Scotia; and 

 I trust that henceforth the received statement will be that the first 

 indications of the existence of reptiles in the coal period, were ob- 

 tained by Logan, in the lower coal formation of Nova Scotia, in 

 1841. Insects and arachnidans, it may be observed, had pre- 

 viously been discovered in the coal formation in Europe. 



The original specimen of these footprints is still in the collec- 

 tion of Sir William Logan. It is a slab of dark colored sand- 

 stone, glazed with fine clay on the surface ; and having a series of 

 seven footprints in two rows, distant about 3 inches ; the distance 

 of the impression in each row beijig 3 or 4 inches, and the individual 

 impressions about 1 inch in length. They seem to have been made 

 by the points of the toes, which must have been armed with strong 

 and apparently blunt claws, and appear as if either the surface had 

 been somewhat firm, or as if the body of the animal had been 

 partly water-borne. In one place only is there a distinct mark of 

 the whole foot, as if the animal had exerted an unusual pressure 

 in turning or stopping suddenly. One pair of feet, the fore feet I 

 presume, appear to have had four claws ; the other pair may have 

 had three or four, and it is to be observed that the outer toe, as in 

 the larger footprints discovered by Dr. King, projects in the man- 

 ner of a thumb, as in the chierotherian tracks of the Trias. No mark 

 of the tail or belly appears. The impressions are such as may have 

 been made by some of the reptiles to be described in the sequel, 

 as, for instance, by Dendrerpeton Acadianum. 



Attention having been directed to such marks by these obser- 

 vations of Sir William Logan, several other discoveries of the 

 same kind were subsequently made, in various parts of the pro- 

 vince, and in different members of the carboniferous system. 

 The first of these, in order of time, was made in 1844, in 

 beds of red sandstone and shale near Tatamagouche, in the eastern 

 part of Nova Scotia, and belonging to the upper or newer mem- 

 bers of the coal measures. In examining these beds with the view 

 of determining their precise geological age, I found on the surface 

 of some of them impressions of worm-burrows, rain drops, and sun- 

 cracks, and with these, two kinds of footprints, probably of rep- 

 tilian animals. One kind consisted of marks, or rather scratches, 

 as of three toes, and resembling somewhat the scratches made by 



