438 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



" The specimens were subsequently taken to London and re-examined by Professor 

 Owen, who confirmed Wyman's inferences, added other characters to the description, 

 and named the larger and better preserved species Dendrerpeton Acadianum, in allusion 

 to its discovery in the interior of a tree, and to its native country of Acadia, or Nova 

 Scotia. 



" In form, Dendrerpeton Acadianum was probably lizard-like ; with a broad flat head, 

 short stout limbs, and an elongated tail; and having its skin, and more particularly that 

 of the belly, protected by small bony plates closely overlapping each other. It may have 

 attained the length of two feet. The form of the head is not unlike that of Baphetes, 

 but longer in proportion, and much resembles that of the labyrinthodont reptiles of the 

 Trias. 



"This ancient inhabitant of the coal-swamps of Nova Scotia, was, in short, as we 

 often find to be the case with the earliest forms of life, the possessor of powers and struc- 

 tures not usually, in the modern world, combined in a single species. It was certainly 

 not a fish, yet its bony scales, and the form of its vertebras, and of its teeth, might, in 

 the absence of other evidence, cause it to be mistaken for one. We call it a batrachian, 

 yet its dentition, the sculpturing of the bones of its skull, which were certainly no more 

 external plates than the similar bones of a crocodile, its ribs, and the structure of its 

 limbs, remind us of the higher reptiles ; and we do not know that it ever possessed gills, 

 or passed through a larval or fish-like condition. Still, in a great many important cha- 

 racters, its structures are undoubtedly batrachian. It stands, in short, in the same posi- 

 tion with the Lepidodendra and Sigillarise, under whose shade it crept, which, though 

 placed by palajo-botanists in alliance with certain modern groups of plants, manifestly 

 differed from these in many of their characters, and occupied a different position in ua- 

 ture. In the Coal period, the distinctions of physical and vital conditions were not well 

 defined ; dry land and water, terrestrial and aquatic plauts and animals, and lower and 

 higher forms of animal and vegetable life, are consequently not easily separated from each 

 other. This is, no doubt, a state of things characteristic of the earlier stages of the earth's 

 history, yet not necessarily so ; for there are some reasons, derived from fossil plants, for 

 believing that in the preceding Devonian period there was less of this, aud consequently 

 that there may then have been a higher and more varied animal life than in the Coal 

 period. Even in the modern world also, we still find local cases of this early union of 

 dissimilar conditions. It is in the swamps of Africa, at one time dry, at another inun- 

 dated, that such intermediate forms as Lepidosiren occur, to baffle the classificatory 

 powers of naturalists ; and it is in the stagnant unaerated waters, half swamp, half lake 

 or river, and unfit for ordinary fishes, that the semi-reptilian Amia and Lepidosteus still 

 keep up the characters of their palaeozoic predecessors. 



"The dentition of Dendrerpeton shows it to have been carnivorous in a high degree. 

 It may have captured fishes and smaller reptiles, either on land or in water, and very 

 probably fed on dead carcases as well. 



"All the bones of Dendrerpeton hitherto found, as well as those of the smaller rep- 

 tilian species hereafter described, have been obtained from the interior of erect Sigiilarire, 

 and all of these in one of the many beds, which, at the Joggins, contain such remains." 



Amongst the other reptilian remains found in great trees at South Joggin 

 are a smaller-sized species of Dendrerpeton, D. Oweni, the Hylonomus 

 Lyelli, H. aciedentatus, H. Wymani, H. Dawsoni, and the JEosaurus Aca- 

 dianus. The Dendrerpeton Oioeni lived in the same places with its larger 

 congener, but it may have differed somewhat in its habits ; its longer and 

 sharper teeth may have been better suited for devouring worms, larvae, 

 or soft-skinned fishes, while those of the larger Dendrerpeton Acadianum 

 were better adapted to deal with the mailed ganoids of the period, or with 

 the smaller reptiles, Avhich were more or less protected with bony or horny 

 scales. In the original reptiliferous tree discovered by Dawson and Lyell 

 at the Joggins in 1861, there were, besides the Dendrerpeton Acadianum, 

 some small elongated vertebrae, evidently of a different species. These 

 were first detected by Professor Wyman in his examination of these spe- 

 cimens, and were figured, but not named in the notice in the ' Quarterly 



