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 Bendrerpeton 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 closdy 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 
Ti-ias. 
" 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 vertebrae, 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 structiu-e 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-liice 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 Sigillariae, under whose shade it crept, which, though 
placed by palajo-botanists in alliance with certain modern groups of plants, manifestly 
differed fi'om these in many of their characters, and occupied a different position in na- 
ture. In the Coal period, the distinctions of physical and vital conditions were not well 
defined ; dry land and water, terrestrial and aquatic plants 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, and 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 palteozoic 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 boues of Dendrerpeton hitherto found, as well as those of the smaller rep- 
tilian species hereafter described, have been obtained from the interior of erect Sigillarise, 
and all of these in one of the many beds, which, at the Joggins, contain such remains." 
Amongst tlie other reptilian remains found in great trees at South Joggin 
are a smaller-sized species of Dendrerpeton, D. Oweni, the Hylonomus 
Lyelli, S. aciedentatus, S. Wymani, H. Datcsoiii, and the JSosaurus Aca- 
dianus. The Dendrerpeton Oiceni 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 \dirgeT Dendrerpeton Acadianum 
were better adapted to deal with the mailed ganoids of the period, or with 
the smaller reptiles, which 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 Dendrerjjeton Acadiannm, 
some small elongated vertebrse, evidently of a different species. These 
were first detected by Professor W3'man in his examination of these spe- 
cimens, and were figured, but not named in the notice in the ' Quarterly 
