1853.] OWEN BBITISH CARBONIFEROUS REPTILE. 69 



as above mentioned, by the impression upon the shale-matrix, agree 

 more with the finer reticulations characteristic of the cranial bones of 

 the Archeffosaurus Dechenii * than with the deeper and stronger reticu- 

 lated markings of the same bones in the Labyrinthodon. The Com- 

 parative Anatomist and Palseontologist who may have been occupied 

 with the special researches required for the determination of the actual 

 nature and affinities of the fossils from the Steinkohlengebirge of 

 Germany, described by Prof. Goldfuss, under the generic title of 

 Archegosaufus, and deemed by the same learned and painstaking 

 investigator to make a transition from Fishes to Lizards and Croco- 

 diles f, will have no difficulty or hesitation in recognizing in the 

 characters of the coal-shale fossil in Lord Enniskillen's collection, as 

 above interpreted, those of a vertebrate animal most nearly allied to 

 the Archegosaurus. Those characters are not reconcileable with any 

 cranial structure of the most sauroid, or rather salamandroid, fossil 

 fishes hitherto described. With regard to the affinities of the Ai^- 

 chegosaurus of the German coal-fields, of which a large proportion 

 of the skeleton has been obtained, I retain the same opinion which 

 I formed, after becoming acquainted with the estimable work of 

 Prof. Goldfuss, and after receiving from its author casts of the 

 fossils therein described and figured; — viz. that they were essentially 

 Batrachian, and most nearly allied to the perennibranchiate, or lowest 

 or most fish-like of that Order of Reptiles. The evidence which Sir 

 Charles Lyell has obtained in corroboration of that aiforded by foot- 

 prints, of the existence of Reptilia in the coal-formations of Nova 

 Scotia, leads also to a reference of these coal-field Reptiles to the same 

 low group in the air-breathing vertebrate classes. 



The fossil, above described, gives additional evidence to the same 

 purport, and extends the known geographical range of the Batrachoid 

 Reptilia of the Carboniferous epoch. That it belongs to the period of 

 the coal-formation is shown by the nature of the matrix in which it is 

 imbedded ; the slab of coal-shale containing, besides the fossil in ques- 

 tion, the large scale of a Holoptyehius. This gives the evidence of chief 

 import in the great question of the geological age of air-breathing Verte- 

 brata. As to the precise locality from which the portion of coal-shale 

 and its fossils was obtained, the noble owner of the unique specimen 

 testifies that during the period including the acquisition of that spe- 

 cimen, no fossils from extra-Britannic coal-formations had been added 

 to the collection at Florence Court, and his lordship's conviction, from 

 memory, is, that the specimen was obtained, by purchase, from a 

 dealer, with other fossils from the Glasgow coal-field, at Carluke, 

 Lanark ; that the other fossils, so obtained, being of recognizable 

 carboniferous Fishes, were labelled and placed in their proper drawers ; 

 whilst this small and ambiguous specimen was placed temporarily in a 

 drawer assigned for such miscellaneous objects. 



In conclusion, I beg to repeat, that to Prof. M'Coy belongs all the 



* Op. cit. pi. 1. fig. 1. 



t lb. " Fossile Saurier u. s. w. die den Uebergang der Ichthyodeen zu den 

 Lacerten und Krokodilen bilden," p. 3. 



