284 AIR-BREATHERS OF THE COAL PERIOD. 



XIV. — Concluding Remarks. 



Having finished the work which I proposed to myself, in illus- 

 tration of the air-breathers of the coal period in Nova Scotia, it 

 now remains to mention a few general thoughts which have arisen 

 in connection with the animals which have been described. 



I have endeavored, in the frontispiece, to present to the eye the 

 forms and attitudes of these creatures. In doing so as little lati- 

 tude as possible has been allowed to the imagination, and the 

 structural points iudicated by the bones and skin actually found> 

 have been adhered to as closely as practicable. On the left hand 

 Baphetes planiceps is seen emerging with a ganoid fish in its 

 jaws. Next Dendrerpeton Acadianum is represented slowly 

 walking up the inclined shore, and leaving its hand-like footprints 

 thereon. A little farther up Hylonomus Lyelli is leaping in pur- 

 suit of an insect, and Hylonomus Wymani stands a little more in 

 the foreground, while Hylerpeton Dawsoni is disporting itself in 

 the water in front. I am quite aware that the form and action 

 given to Hylonomus are at variance with the views of its nature 

 which would ally it with A^chegosaurus ; but, as stated above, I 

 cannot refuse my belief to the testimony of the bones themselves, 

 which prove a development of the hind limbs not likely to have 

 been associated with an elongated body and natatorial tail, and 

 pointing to saltatory motion on land, and perhaps frog-like swim- 

 ming in the water. In the middle ground of the picture I have 

 placed a bank of soil, showing a section of a hollow trunk similar 

 in situation to those in which the reptile bones of the Joggins 

 occur, and on this bank and in the distance, I have endeavored to 

 give some of the characteristic forms of the vegetation of the 

 period : Ferns, Cordaites, Sigillaria, Lepidendron, Lepidophloios, 

 and Calamites. 



It has recently been a favorite view with some writers on this 

 subject, that coal beds may have been formed in shallow salt water, 

 and that Sigillariaz may have grown in such places, like man- 

 groves. It will be seen from the frontispiece, that I do not believe 

 in this theory of the formation of coal, but on the contrary adhere 

 to the opinion which I have formerly maintained, that the coal beds 

 and under-clays are of the nature of peaty soils. In no part of 

 the world are the coal measures better developed or more fully 

 exposed than in the coast sections of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, 

 and in these, throughout their whole thickness, no indication has 



