218 Sir C. Lyell on Fossil Reptilian Remains 



Pennsylvania by Dr King ; and in Europe three or four in- 

 stances of skeletons of the same class of animals have been 

 obtained, but the present is the first example of any of their 

 bones having been met with in America, in rocks of higher 

 antiquity than the trias. It is hoped, however, that other 

 instances will soon come to light, when the contents of up- 

 right trees, so abundant in Nova Scotia, have been syste- 

 matically explored ; for in such situations the probability of 

 discovering ancient air-breathing creatures seems greater 

 than in ordinary subaqueous deposits. Nevertheless we must 

 not indulge too sanguine expectations on this head, when we 

 recollect that no fossil vertebrata of a higher grade than 

 fishes, nor any land-shells, have as yet been met with in the 

 oolitic coal-field of the James River, near Richmond, Vir- 

 ginia, a coal-field which has been worked extensively for 

 three-quarters of a century. The coal alluded to is bitumi- 

 nous, and as a fuel resembles the best of the ancient coal of 

 Nova Scotia and Great Britain. The associated strata of 

 sandstone and shale contain prostrate zamites and ferns, and 

 erect calamites and equiseta, which last evidently remain in the 

 position where they grew in mud and sand. Whether the 

 age of these beds be oolitic, as Messrs W. B. Rogers and 

 Lyell have concluded, or upper triassic, as some other geo- 

 logists suspect, they still belong clearly to an epoch when 

 saurians and other reptiles flourished abundantly in Europe ; 

 and they therefore prove that the preservation of ancient ter- 

 restrial surfaces even in secondary rocks does not imply, as 

 we might have anticipated, conditions the most favourable 

 to our finding therein creatures of a higher organization 

 than fishes. 



In breaking up the rock in which the reptilian bones were 

 entombed, a small fossil body resembling a land-shell of the 

 genus Pupa, was detected. As such it was recognized by 

 Dr Gould of Boston, and afterwards by M. Deshayes of Paris, 

 both of whom carefully examined its form and striation. 

 When parts of the surface were subsequently magnified 250 

 diameters, by Professor Quekett of the College of Surgeons, 

 they were seen to exhibit ridges and grooves undistinguish- 

 able from those belonging to the striation of living species 

 of land-shells. The internal tissue also of the shell displayed, 



