The vertebrate class, that thus adapted itself to breathing the atmosphere, and was developed from a branch of the Ganoids, takes the name of the Dipneusts or Dipnoa ("double-breathers"), because they retained the earlier gill-respiration along with the new pulmonary (lung) respiration, like the lowest amphibia. This class was represented during the paleozoic age (or the Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian periods) by a number of different genera. There are only three genera of the class living to-day: Protopterus annectens in the rivers of tropical Africa (the White Nile, the Niger, Quelliman, etc.), Lepidosiren paradoxa in tropical South America (in the tributaries of the Amazon), and Ceratodus Forsteri in the rivers of East Australia. This wide distribution of the three isolated survivors proves that they represent a group that was formerly very large. In their whole structure they form a transition from the fishes to the amphibia. The transitional formation between the two classes is so pronounced in the whole organisation of these remarkable animals that zoologists had a lively controversy over the question whether they were really fishes or amphibia. Several distinguished zoologists classed them with the amphibia, though most now associate them with the fishes. As a matter of fact, the characters of the two classes are so far united in the Dipneusts that the answer to the question depends entirely on the definition we give of "fish" and "amphibian." In habits they are true amphibia. During the tropical winter, in the rainy season, they swim in the water like the fishes, and breathe water by gills. During the dry season they bury themselves in the dry mud, and breathe the atmosphere through lungs, like the amphibia and the higher vertebrates. In this double respiration they resemble the lower amphibia, and have the same characteristic formation of the heart; in this they are much superior to the fishes. But in most other features they approach nearer to the fishes, and are inferior to the amphibia. Externally they are entirely fish-like. (FIGURE 2.258. Young ceratodus, shortly after issuing from the egg, magnified ten times. k gill-cover, l liver. (From Richard Semon.) FIGURE 2.259. Young ceratodus six weeks after issuing from the egg. s spiral fold of gut, b rudimentary belly-fin. (From Richard Semon.))