396 CAEBONIFEEOUS EEPTILES. [Ch. XXV. 



nothing ; and even if they should be thought to imply that a warm tem- 

 perature characterized the northern seas in the carboniferous era, the 

 absence of cold may have given rise (as at present in the seas of the Ber- 

 mudas, under the influence of the Gulf-stream) to a very wide geographical 

 range of stone-building corals and shell-bearing cuttle-fish, without its 

 bein^ necessary to call in the aid of tropical heat. 



CARBONIFEROUS REPTILES. 



Where we have evidence in a single coal-field, as in that of Nova 

 Scotia, or of South Wales, of fifty or even a hundred ancient forests buried 

 one above the other, with the roots of trees still in their original position, 

 and with some of the trunks still remaining erect, we are apt to wonder 

 that until the year 1844 no remains of contemporaneous air-breathing 

 creatures should have been discovered. No vertebrated animals more 

 highly organized than fish, no mammalia or birds, no saurians, frogs, tor- 

 toises, or snakes were known in rocks of such high antiquity. In the 

 coalfields of Europe mention has been made of beetles, locusts, and a few 

 other insects, but no land-shells have even now been met with. Agassiz 

 described in his great work on fossil fishes more than one hundred and 

 fifty species of ichthyolites from the coal-strata, ninety-four belonging to 

 the families of shark and ray, and fifty-eight to the class of ganoids. 

 Some of these fish are very remote in their organization from any now 

 living, especially those of the family called Sauroid by Agassiz ; as 

 Megalichthys, Holop)tychius, and others, Avhich were often of great size, 

 and all predaceous. Their osteology, says M. Agassiz, reminds us in 

 many respects of the skeletons of saurian reptiles, both by the close 

 sutures of the bones of the skull, their large conical 

 teeth striated longitudinally (see fig. 509), the ar- 

 ticulations of the spinous processes with the verte- 

 bras, and other characters. Yet they do not form 

 a family intermediate between fish and reptiles, but 

 are true fish, though doubtless more highly organ- 

 ized than any living fish.* 



The annexed figure represents a large tooth of 

 the Holoptyckius, found by Mr. Horner, in the 

 Cannel coal of Fifeshire. This fish probably in- 

 habited an estuary, like many of its contemporaries, 

 and frequented both rivers and the sea. 



At length, in 1S44, the first skeleton of a true 

 reptile was announced from the coal of Miinster- 

 Appel in Rhenish Bavaria, .bv H. von Meyer, under 



, rr V . i • i -i • EolopbycMua Eihberti, Ag. 



the name of Apateon pedesins, the animal being Fifeshire coal-field. 



Tii i iijj.ii i j l Tooth : natural size. 



supposed to be nearly related to the salamanders. 



Three years later, in 1847, Prof, von Dechen found in the coal-field of 



Saarbruck, at the village of Lebach, between Strasburg and Treves, 



* Agassiz, Poiss. Foss. voL ii. p. 88, (fee. 



