REVIEWS. 



435 



yet the record of the rocks was totally silent as to the animals that may have trod the 

 shore, or the trees that may have waved over it. All that can be said is that the sun 

 shone, the rain fell, and the wind blew as it does now, and that the sea abounded in 

 living creatures. The eyes of trilobites, the weathered Laurentian rocks, the wind -rip- 

 ples in the Potsdam sandstone, the rich fossils of the limestones, testify to these things. 

 The existence of such conditions would lead us to hope that land animals may yet be 

 found in these older formations. On the other hand, the gradual failure of one form of 

 life after another, as we descend in the geological series, and the absence of fishes and 

 land plants in the older Silurian rocks, might induce us to believe that we have here 

 reached the beginning of animal life, and have left far behind us those forms that inhabit 

 the land. 



" Even in the Carboniferous period, though land plants abound, air-breathers are few, 

 and most of them have only been recently recognized. We know, however, with cer- 

 tainty that the dark and luxuriant forests of the Coal period were not destitute of animal 

 life. Reptiles crept under their shade, land-snails and millipedes fed on the rank leaves 

 and decaying vegetable matter, and insects flitted through the air of the sunnier spots. 

 Great interest attaches to these creatures ; perhaps the first-born species in some of their 

 respective types, and certainly belonging to one of the oldest land faunas, and presenting 

 prototypes of future forms equally interesting to the geologist and the zoologist. 



" It has happened to the writer of these pages to have had some share in the discovery 

 of several of these ancient animals. The coal formation of Nova Scotia, so full in its 

 development, so rich in fossil remains, and so well exposed in coast cliffs, has afforded 

 admirable opportunities for such discoveries, which have been so far improved that at 

 least eight out of the not very large number of known Carboniferous land animals, have 

 been obtained from it." 



Five species of Carboniferous reptiles have been recognized on the 

 continent of Europe, three in Great Britain, and four in the United States 

 of America. Footprints were amongst the earliest indications of the Car- 

 boniferous reptiles of Nova Scotia : — 



" It has often happened to geologists, as to other explorers of new regions, that foot- 

 prints on the sand have guided them to the inhabitants of unknown lands. The first 

 trace ever observed of reptiles in the Carboniferous system, consisted of a series of small 

 but well-marked footprints found by Sir W. E. Logan, in 1841, in the lower coal-mea- 

 sures of Horton Bluff, in Nova Scotia. 



" The rocks of Horton Bluff are below the gypsum of that neighbourhood ; so that 

 the specimen in question (if Ly ell's views are correct) comes from the very bottom of the 

 coal series, or at any rate very low down in it, and demonstrates the existence of reptiles 

 at an earlier epoch than has hitherto been determined ; none having been previously 

 found below the magnesian limestone, or to give it Murchison's new name, the ' Per- 

 mian era.' 



This important discovery, made in 1841, and published in 1842, has been 

 overlooked by European writers : — 



" And the discovery of reptilian bones by Von Dechen, at Saarbruck, in 1844, and 

 that of footprints by Dr. King in the same year, in Pennsylvania, have been uniformly 

 referred to as the first observations of this kind. This error Dr. Dawson desires to cor- 

 rect, not merely in the interest of truth, but also in that of his friend Sir William Logan, 

 and of his native province of Nova Scotia ; and he trusts that henceforth the received 

 statement will be, that the first indications of the existence of reptiles in the Coal period, 

 were obtained by Logan, in the lower coal formation of Nova Scotia, in 1841. Insects 

 and arachnidans, it may be observed, had previously been discovered in the coal formation 

 in Europe. 



" The original specimen of these footprints is still in the collection of Sir William 

 Logan. It is a slab of dark-coloured sandstone, glazed with fine clay on the surface ; 

 and having a series of seven footprints in two rows, distant about three inches ; the dis- 

 tance of the impressions in each row being three or four inches, and the individual im- 

 pressions about one inch in length. They seem to have been made by the points of the 

 toes, which must have been armed with strong and apparently blunt claws, and appear as 



