ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Clll 



considered highly creditable to the palaeontologists of Switzerland 

 and to Geneva, of the Academy of which city M. Pictet is a Pro- 

 fessor. 



I have already had occasion to notice the varied labours of Her- 

 man Von Meyer, whilst stating to you the grounds upon which the 

 Council had awarded to him the Wollaston Medal ; but it is right 

 that I should briefly notice in more detail the later numbers of the 

 1 Palaeontographia/ a work which is the joint production of Dunker 

 and Von Meyer. In the July number, the history of the discovery 

 of reptilian remains is briefly but succinctly stated, from the time 

 when the Botryosaurus of the Zechstein formation, a genus esta- 

 blished by Von Meyer, was deemed the oldest or first reptile form of 

 the ancient world, to the discovery, in 1847, by Von Dechen of remains 

 which were distinguished from the fish-remains of the Coal Forma- 

 tion of Lebach,in Rhenish Prussia, and were rightly assumed to belong 

 to Reptilia. The relics of the past which first attracted attention 

 were Coprolites of a finger's length ; but Von Dechen soon set the 

 peasantry to search for all kinds of fossil remains, and five nodules 

 containing reptilian relics were brought to light, from which Gold- 

 fuss established the genus Archegosaurus. Before, however, this 

 positive determination of the existence of reptiles at so remote an 

 epoch as the Coal formation, several geologists and palaeontologists 

 had suspected their existence ; but either the actual age of the de- 

 posits, or the true nature of the fossils remained uncertain. The 

 nascent expectation, however, that Reptilian remains would be found 

 was a proof that old prejudices were beginning to give way ; whilst 

 their original depth may be understood from the fact cited by Von 

 Meyer, that the first specimen of the Archegosaurus was found in 1777, 

 and was long afterwards described as the head of a fish by Agassiz, who 

 named this very specimen, even then the only one known, Pygopterus 

 Lucius, evidently, therefore, considering it a fish : so sure is any long- 

 admitted theory to interfere with the due appreciation of truth when 

 it comes in an unexpected form. The imaginary boundary once passed, 

 other Reptilian remains soon flowed in from the Coal formation. In 

 1848 Von Meyer proved that the cranium upon which Goldfuss had 

 established his Sclerocephalus Hauseri belonged to a reptile, and not to 

 a fish. In 1849, Jordan established a second species of Archegosaurus, 

 A. latirostris, also from Lebach, where the first species, A. Decheni 

 had been discovered. In 1853, Professors Wyman and Owen named 

 some Reptilian remains found in Nova Scotia Dendrerpeton acaclia- 

 num ; another specimen, from the coal of the neighbourhood of Glas- 

 gow, Prof. Owen termed Parabatrachus Colei ; and in 1854, Nova 

 Scotia supplied him with the data for estabhshing his Baphetes 

 planiceps. All these reptiles belonged to the remarkable family 

 of Labyrinthodonta ; and Von Meyer observes that the Telerpeton 

 elginense of Mantel, though from the Upper Devonian, may be con- 

 sidered as belonging to the same geological period, — an opinion in 

 harmony with the views of the present leading Irish geologists, who 

 consider the Old Red Sandstone to be simply the base of the Carbo- 

 niferous deposits ; and I may add that I have repeatedly urged the 



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