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Updated: July 27, 2025
His ship’s company was but a dozen men, it is true, but she was used for the purposes of trade only; he would have required a more numerous crew, and all the implements, for taking seals and other amphibia.
Strong shadows seemed to palpitate with life, imparting animation and giving animal shapes to the rocks along the coast. In the distance a promontory resembled a lion crouching above the waves, glaring at Jaime with silent hostility. The rocks on a level with the water raised and lowered their black heads, crowned with green hair, like giant amphibia of a monstrous humanity.
In the first place, we owe a number of very valuable data to the very interesting class of Vertebrates that come next to the Dipneusts and have been developed from them the Amphibia. To this group belong the salamander, the frog, and the toad. But the reptiles are much more advanced than the Amphibia, and are nearer to the birds in the chief points of their structure.
When we think of the diet of the Amphibia we are reminded of the other prominent representatives of land life at the time. Snails, spiders, and myriapods crept over the ground or along the stalks of the trees, and a vast population of insects filled the air.
They were of the Labyrinthodont family, and their association with the fish of the coal, of which so large a proportion are ganoids, reminds us that the living perennibranchiate amphibia of America frequent the same rivers as the ganoid Lepidostei or bony pikes. Slab of sandstone from the coal-measures of Pennsylvania, with footprints of air-breathing reptile and casts of cracks.
Their ancestors also had long tails and gills like the gilled Amphibia, as the tail and the gill-arches of the human embryo clearly show. For comparative anatomical and ontogenetic reasons, we must not seek these amphibian ancestors of ours as one would be inclined to do, perhaps among the tail-less Batrachia, but among the tailed lower Amphibia.
As they proceeded, the enormous numbers of frogs became surprising, as if this host of amphibia had leagued against the invading demons. Then flocks of water-fowl, with clamorous cries and rustling wings, rose here and there, startled from their quiet nests by the approaching inundation, which by this time had completely hidden what was called in that region the public road.
The true Amphibia are nearer to the Dipneusta and the fishes; they are also much older than the reptiles. It is probable that the Amphibia were evolved even earlier during the Devonian period from the Dipneusta.
Analogy seems to me to be rather in favour of, than against, the supposition that while only Ganoid fishes inhabited the fresh waters of our Devonian land, Amphibia and Reptilia, or even higher forms, may have existed, though we have not yet found them.
There are several similar cases among Reptiles and Amphibia. In these also rudiments of limbs are entirely absent in the embryos or larval stages.
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