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GALLERIES Nos. 4, 5.—FOSSIL AMPHIBIANS. 
The frogs, newts, salamanders and their allies are inter¬ 
mediate in all essential respects between reptiles and fishes. 
It is therefore interesting to no.te that the Class Amphibia, 
to which they belong, attained most importance in 
Carboniferous and Permian times, between the Devonian 
period, when fishes were the highest kind of life, and the 
Triassic period, when the “ Age of Reptiles ” dawned. Since 
Triassic times, indeed, the Amphibia seem to have been 
degenerate and insignificant animals, and the geological 
record is so incomplete that it furnishes none of the links 
connecting these later Orders with the Order which repre¬ 
sented the Class in its prime. 
Class IV.—AMPHIBIA. 
Ord!er I.— ANURA or ECAUDATA. 
The frogs and toads, or tailless Amphibians, seem to have 
undergone scarcely any essential change since the Eocene and 
Oligocene periods. Fine specimens both of adult individuals 
and tadpoles are exhibited from the Lower Miocene lignite of 
Rott, near Bonn, and impressions of the soft parts often 
surround the fossils. Palceobatrachus is an extinct toad 
representing a family intermediate between certain existing 
groups. 
Order II.— URODELA or CAUDATA. 
The newts and salamanders have also changed but little 
since the Eocene and • Oligocene periods. They are proved, 
indeed, to date back to the end of Jurassic times by a single 
skeleton (Hyloeobatrachus croyi) from the Wealden of Bernis- 
sart, Belgium, now in the Brussels Museum. Hewts are 
exhibited from the Lower Miocene of Rott, near Bonn, and 
Wall-case 
19. 
Table-cases 
U, V. 
Table-case 
U. 
Wall -case 
19. 
Table-case 
U. 
