THE SCOUTS OF THE REPTILE HORDE. iqq 



The first indication of the existence of reptilian remains 

 in rocks as old as the coal was the discovery, in 1843, by 

 Sir William Logan, of some footprints in the coal-measures 

 of Nova Scotia. The first reptilian bones were discovered 

 in 1852, in the celebrated coal-measures of South Joggins, 

 on the Bay of Fundy. The measures here are two and 

 three fourth miles in thickness; and along a middle belt 

 of fourteen hundred feet they abound in the remains of 

 ancient forests, the trunks and stumps of large trees still 

 standing erect, with their roots still penetrating the an- 

 cient soil. Here, as has been shown by Messrs. Dawson 

 and Lyell, root-bearing soils occur at sixty-eight different 

 levels, and between them are deposits of shale and sand- 

 stone, which must have had an aqueous and probably a ma- 

 rine origin, thus showing, beyond all controversy, that the 

 level of the locality underwent at least sixty-eight oscilla- 

 tions during about one tenth of the period of the coal-meas- 

 ures. Many of these fossil tree-trunks are hollow, and filled 

 with sandstone containing vegetable remains. In one of 

 these hollow trunks the hammer of the Acadian naturalists 

 laid bare some bones, which proved to be the remains of 

 the oldest reptile at that time known in America, and 

 which was subsequently named Dendrerpeton Acadianum. 

 Different individuals must have varied from six inches to 

 three feet in length, and they were probably batrachians 

 rather than true reptiles, though naturalists do not always 

 make the distinction. These little animals seem to have 

 made their home in the hollow of the tree, and to have 

 been overtaken by the flood which ended the epoch and 

 buried them among the other relics of their time. Anoth- 

 er batrachian was discovered the same year in the coal of 

 Pictou, in Nova Scotia, and in 1859 still another. The 

 reader will find these all more minutely described in Daw- 

 son's "Air-breathers of the Coal Period." 



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