436 



THE. GEOLOGIST. 



if either the surface had been somewhat firm, or as if the body of the animal had been 

 partly water-borne. In one place only is there a distinct mark of the whole foot, as if 

 the animal had exerted an unusual pressure in turning or stopping suddenly. The im- 

 pressions are such as may have been made by some of the reptiles to be described in the 

 sequel, as, for instance, by Dendrerpeion Acadianum. 



" Attention having been directed to such marks by these observations of Sir "William 

 Logan, several other discoveries of the same kind were subsequently made, in various 

 parts of the province, and in different members of the Carboniferous system. The first 

 of these, in order of time, was made in 1844, in beds of lied Sandstone and shale near 

 Tatamagouche, in the eastern part of Nova Scotia, and belonging to the upper or newer 

 members of the coal-measures. In examining these beds with the view of determining 

 their precise geological age, Dr. Dawson found on. the surface of some of them impres- 

 sions of worm-burrows, rain-drops, and sun-cracks, and with these, two kinds of foot- 

 prints, probably of reptilian animals. One kind consisted of marks, or rather scratches, 

 as of three toes, and resembling somewhat the scratches made by the claws of a tortoise 

 in creeping up a bank of stiff clay ; they were probably of the same nature and origin 

 with those found by Logan at Horton. The others were of very different appearance. 

 They consisted of two series of strongly-marked elongated impressions, without distinct 

 marks of toes, in series four inches distant from each other, and with an intervening tail- 

 mark. They seem to have been produced by an animal wading in soft mud, so that deep 

 holes, rather than regular impressions, marked its footsteps, and that in the hind foot, 

 the heel touched the surface, giving a plantigrade appearance to the tracks. 



" Shortly afterward, Dr. Harding, of Windsor, when examining a cargo of sandstone 

 which had been lauded at that place from Parrsboro'. found on one of the slabs a very 

 distinct series of footprints each with four toes, and a trace of the fifth. The rocks at 

 that place are probably of nearly the same age with those of Parrsboro'. Similar foot- 

 prints are also stated to have been found by Dr. Gesner, at Parrsboro'. Dr. Dawson has 

 since observed several instances of such impressions at the Joggins, at Horton, and near 

 "Windsor; these examples showing that reptilian animals existed in no inconsiderable 

 numbers throughout the coal-field of Nova Scotia, and from the beginning to the end of 

 the Carboniferous period. On comparing these with one another, it will be observed 

 that Logan's, Harding's, and one of mine are of similar general character, and may have 

 been made by one kind of animal, which must have had the fore and hind feet nearly of 

 equal size. The other belongs to a smaller animal, which probably travelled on longer 

 limbs, more in the manner of an ordinary quadruped. These impressions are chiefly in- 

 teresting as indicatiug the wide diffusion and abundance of the features producing them, 

 and that they haunted tidal flats and muddy shores, perhaps emerging from the water 

 that they might bask in the sun, or possibly searching for food among the rejectamenta 

 of the sea, or of lagunes and estuaries." 



In 1851 Dr. Dawson discovered, in a large pile of rubbish, at the Albion 

 Mines Railway Station in some blocks of bard carboniferous shale and 

 earthy coal, scales, teeth, and coprolites. Observing an object of larger 

 size than usual at the edge of a block, he split the block opt j n and found a 

 large flattened skull, which was dispatched to England, and after remain- 

 ing a year or two as quietly in the Geological Society's collection as if in 

 its original bed in the coal-mine, it was handed, in 1852, to Professor 

 Owen, who described it in December, 1853, under the r ame of Baphetes 

 jolaniceps, or the "flat-headed diving animal," in allusion to the flatness of 

 the creature's skull, and the possibility of its having been in the habit of 

 diving : — 



" Of the general form and dimensions of Baphetes, the facts at present known do not 

 enable us to say much. Its formidable teeth and strong maxillary bones show that it 

 must have devoured animals of considerable size, probably the fishes whose remains are 

 found with it, or the smaller reptiles of the Coal. It must in short have been crocodilian, 

 rather than frog-like, in its mode of life; but whether, like the labyrinthodonts, it had 

 strong limbs and a short body, or like the crocodiles, an elongated form and a powerful 

 natatory tail, the remains do not decide. One of the limbs or a vertebra of the tail 



