364 Sir J. W. Dawson. Additional Report on Erect [Mar. 19, 



sion 4, Section XII, of the general section, and in the upper part of 

 Coal-group No. 21. It presented several interesting peculiarities. It 

 was about 2 ft. in diameter, near the base, and stood 8 ft. high. As 

 much as 5 ft. of its lower portion was filled with a very irregular 

 mixture of hard arenaceous and carbonaceous matter and vege- 

 table fragments, evidently drifted in by rain-water, while there 

 were also layers and patches of brownish coprolitic matter, largely 

 composed of calcium phosphate, and showing under the microscope 

 innumerable fragments of chitinous matter, probably remains of 

 Millipedes, with numbers of small bones and bony fragments. The 

 great thickness of productive material and the abundance of copro- 

 lite indicated that the tree had long remained open, and that some 

 at least of the animals contained in it had subsisted for some time on 

 the bodies of smaller Batrachians and Millipedes which had fallen into 

 their prison. One specimen of Dendrerpeton, found near the top of 

 the mass, is the largest yet known, .its head being 5 in. in length. 

 The long duration of this tree is, perhaps, accounted for by the unusual 

 thickness of its outer bark. It stood upon a thin, coaly layer resting 

 on an underclay, passing downward into a gray shale, 8 ft. in thick- 

 ness. The lower part of the trunk was enclosed in alternations of 

 argillaceous shale and flaggy sandstone to the height of about 5 ft., 

 and above this it penetrated for 3 ft. into a thick, compact sandstone, 

 containing a few drifted trunks of trees. It would seem, therefore, 

 either that the current conveying the sand had cleared away 3 ft. of 

 soft deposits surrounding the hollow trunk, or that the animals had 

 found access to the interior by a crevice or hole in the bark of a tree 

 standing 3 ft. above the surface on which they walked. 



I may remark here that the beds enclosing erect tree3 are often 

 very irregular, as if deposited by local inundations, and that the 

 thick beds of reddish, mottled, and greyish sandstones which at the 

 Joggins separate the coal-groups, appear to be of similar origin. The 

 great bivalve shell, Asthenodonta Westoiri, of Whiteaves,* is found in 

 one of these beds along with drift trees ; and as it must have been 

 a freshwater species, it was probably swept from some inland lake or 

 pond by a land flood. This would seem to indicate excessive rains as 

 occurring at intervals in the deposition of the coal-bearing rocks, 

 more especially in the Cumberland coal-field, and this may have been 

 connected with the number of erect trees, and the manner of their 

 burial. 



The tree just referred to must have entrapped at least twenty 

 Batrachians, as well as many Millipedes and land snails, embracing 

 most of the species hitherto found in these depositories, and two addi- 

 tional species, which I have named Hylerpeton intermedium and Platy- 

 stegos loricatum. Their description is as follows : — 

 * 4 Eoy. Soc. of Canada, Trans.,' 1893. 



