in the Coal-Measures of Nova Scotia. 217 



high and twenty-two inches in diameter, on being examined 

 by Messrs Dawson and Lyell, yielded, besides numerous 

 fossil plants, some bones and teeth which they believed were 

 referable to a reptile ; but not being competent to decide that 

 osteological question, they submitted the specimens to Dr 

 Jeffries Wyman of Harvard University in the United States. 

 That eminent anatomist declared them to be allied in struc- 

 ture to certain perennibranchiate batrachians of the genera 

 Menobranchus and Menopoma, species of which now inhabit 

 the lakes and rivers of North America. This determination 

 was soon afterwards confirmed by Professor Owen of London, 

 who pointed out the resemblance of some of the associated 

 flat and sculptured bones, with the cranial plates, seen in the 

 skull of the Archegosaurus and Labyrinthodon.* In the same 

 dark-coloured rock, Dr Wyman detected a series of nine ver- 

 tebras, which from their form and transverse processes he re- 

 gards as dorsal, and believes them to have belonged to an 

 adult individual of a much smaller species, about six inches 

 long, whereas the jaws and bones before mentioned are those 

 of a creature probably two-and-a-half feet in length. The 

 microscopic structure of these small vertebrae was found by 

 Professor Quekett to exhibit the same marked reptilian cha- 

 racters as that of the larger bones. 



The fossil remains in question were scattered about the in- 

 terior of the trunk, near its base, among fragments of wood 

 now converted into charcoal, which may have fallen in while 

 the tree was rotting away, having been afterwards cemented to- 

 gether by mud and sand stained black by carbonaceous matter. 

 Whether the reptile crept into the hollow tree while its top 

 was still open to the air, or whether it was washed in with mud 

 during a flood, or in whatever other manner it entered, must be 

 matter of conjecture. Footprints of two reptiles of different 

 sizes have been observed Dr Harding and Dr Gesner on rip- 

 ple-marked flags of the lower coal measures in Nova Scotia, 

 evidently made by quadrupeds walking on the beach, or out 

 of the water, just as the recent Menopoma is sometimes ob- 

 served to do. Other reptilian footprints of much larger size 

 had been previously noticed (as early as 1844) in the coal of 



* Professors Wyman and Owen have named the reptile Dendrerpeton Aca- 

 dianum, Acadia being the ancient Indian name for Nova Scotia. 



