ON CARBONIFEROUS LABYRINTHODONTS 535 
more obtuse in some scales than in others. The scale is thick, and 
rises to a sort of ridge in the middle. The inner end of its outer 
face is commonly bevelled off, or grooved, so as to receive the outer 
end of the next scale in front of and internal to it. The scales are 
so arranged as to form oblique series, directed inwards and forwards, 
and meeting in the middle line. 
Posteriorly (fig. 4) the scales seem to become longer, so as to assume 
a bar-like character ; and at the extreme posterior end of the shield 
there are two irregular, broad, flat plates, apparently bony, and each 
rather more than half an inch wide. The structure of the fossil is 
here, however, very obscure. 
Vertebral centra become distinctly visible on the left side of the 
posterior third of the dermal shield. None of them are completely 
exposed ; but, from what appears, they measure rather less than half an 
inch antero-posteriorly, and a little more in a direction at right angles 
to this. They are well ossified, slightly constricted in the middle 
and have either flat or biconcave articular ends—probably the latter. 
The under surface, which is exposed, exhibits a median ridge and 
two lateral depressions. 
The characters of the neural arches can nowhere be distinctly 
made out, though well-marked traces of them are discernible, par- 
ticularly in the caudal region, where indications of subvertebral arches, 
or chevron-bones, are also to be found. 
At a distance of about 19 inches from the hinder end of the ramus 
of the mandible, and about 17 inches from the end of the tail, a 
stout bone, 1°6 inch long, broad at each end and thinner in the 
middle, lies obliquely across the axis of the body. Its vertebral end 
is half an inch wide, and has a well-marked, though shallow, groove 
or longitudinal depression on its outer surface. An oval depression, 
filled with matrix, occupies the anterior face of the opposite end of 
this bone. There are fragments of one or two other long bones 
behind this ; and the ventral armour, which ends about an inch in 
front of the bone described, is connected posteriorly, as I have stated 
above, with two much-broken, broad, thin, bony plates. 
I take these parts to be the remains of the pelvic girdle and 
member, though their condition is such as to render it almost im- 
possible to decipher their precise nature. 
DESCRIPTION OF PLATE NI. [PLave 37]. 
Fig. 1. Cranium of Loxomma Allmanni, one-third the natural size. 
Fig. 2. Median and lateral sternal plates of the same Labyrinthodont. 
Fig. 3. Pholidogaster pisciformés, one-fifth the natural size. 
Fig. 4. Scales of Pholidogaster, of the natural size. 
