Dolichosoma longissimum, a serpentiform Permian Batrachian after Fritsch. This and Hylonomus are opposite or extreme types in regard to general form.
In addition to the reptilian species above noticed, the erect trees of Coal Mine Point have afforded several others. There is a second and smaller species of Dendrerpeton (D. Oweni) and other forms belonging to the group of Microsauria of which Hylonomus is the type. A second species of that genus (H. Wymani) has already been mentioned. A similar creature, but of larger size and with teeth of a wedge or chisel shape, has been referred to a distinct genus, Smilerpeton. It seems to have been rare, and the only skeleton found is very imperfect. Its teeth are of a form that may have served even for vegetable food, as their sharp edges must have had considerable cutting power. Another curious form of tooth appears in the genus Hylerpeton. It has the points worked into oblique grooves separated by sharp edges, which must have greatly aided in piercing tough integument. These creatures seem to have been of stout and robust build, with large limbs. Still another generic type (Fritschia) is represented by a species near to Hylonomus in several respects, and with long and beautifully formed limb bones, but with the belly protected with rod-like bodies instead of scales. In this respect Hylerpeton is somewhat intermediate, having long and narrow scales on the belly instead of the oval or roundish scales of Hylonomus. All these last-mentioned forms are Microsaurians, with simple teeth and well-developed ribs and limbs, and smooth cranial bones. Two other species are represented by portions of single skeletons too imperfect to allow them to be certainly determined.
I would emphasize here that the vertebrate animals found in the erect trees are necessarily a selection from the most exclusively terrestrial forms, and from the smaller species of these. The numerous newt-like and serpentiform species found in the shales of the coal formation could not find access to these peculiar repositories, nor could the larger species of the Labyrinthodonts and their allies, even if they were in the habit of occasionally prowling in the forests in search of prey, and this would scarcely be likely, more especially as the waters must have afforded to them much more abundant supplies of food. Of the numerous species figured by Fritsch, Cope and Huxley, only a few approach very near to the forms entrapped in the old hollow Sigillariæ, though several have characters half batrachian and half reptilian.
Invertebrate Air-breathers.
The coal formation rocks have afforded Land Snails, Millipedes, Spiders, Scorpions and Insects, so that all the great types of invertebrate life which up to this day can live on land already had representatives in this ancient period. Some of them, indeed, we can trace further back, the land snails probably to the Devonian, the Millipedes to the same period, and the Scorpions and insects as far as the Silurian. No land vertebrate is yet known, older than the Lower Carboniferous, but there is nothing known to us in physical condition, to preclude the existence of such creatures at least in the Devonian.
It would take us too far afield to attempt to notice the invertebrate land life of the Palæozoic in general. This has been done in great detail by Dr. Scudder. I shall here limit myself to the animals found in our erect trees, and merely touch incidentally on such others as may be connected with them.
I have already mentioned the occurrence of a land-snail, a true pulmonate mollusk, in the first find by Lyell and myself at Coal Mine Point, and this was the first animal of this kind known in any rocks older than the Purbeck formation of England. It is one of the groups of so-called Chrysalis-shells, scarcely distinguishable at first sight from some modern West Indian species, and distinctly referable to the modern genus Pupa. It was named Pupa vetusta, and a second and smaller species subsequently found was named P. Bigsbyi, and a third of different form, and resembling the modern snails, bears the name Zonites priscus. The only other Palæozoic land mollusks known at present are a few species found in the coal formation of Ohio, and a fragment supposed to indicate another species from the Devonian plant-beds of St. John's, New Brunswick. This last is the oldest known evidence of pulmonate snails. If we ask the precise relations of these creatures to modern snails, it may be answered that of the two leading subdivisions of the group of air-breathing snails (Pulmonifera), the Operculate, or those with a movable plate to close the mouth of the shell, and the Inoperculate, or those that are destitute of any such shelly lid or operculum to close the shell, the first has been traced no farther back than the Eocene. The second or inoperculate division, includes some genera that are aquatic and some that are terrestrial. Of the aquatic genera no representatives are known in formations older than the Wealden and Purbeck, and these only in Europe. The terrestrial group, or the family of the Helicidæ, which, singularly enough, is that which diverges farthest from the ordinary gill-bearing Gasteropods, is the one which has been traced farthest back, and includes the Palæozoic species. It is further remarkable that a very great gap exists in the geological history of this family. No species are known between the Carboniferous and the early Tertiary, though in the intervening formations there are many fresh-water and estuarine deposits in which such remains might be expected to occur. There is perhaps no reason to doubt the continuance of the Helicidæ through this long portion of geological time, though it is probable that during the interval the family did not increase much in the numbers of its species, more especially as it seems certain that it has its culmination in the modern period, where it is represented by very many and large species, which are dispersed over nearly all parts of our continents.