[Illustration: Fig. 82.--Encrinus liliiformis.] The seas, then, contained a few Reptiles, probably inhabitants of the banks of rivers, as _Phytosaurus_, _Capitosaurus_, &c., and sundry Fishes, as _Sphœrodus_ and _Pycnodus_. In this sub-period we shall say nothing of the Land-Turtles, which for the first time now appear; but, we should note, that at the Bunter period a gigantic Reptile appears, on which the opinions of geologists were for a long while at variance. In the argillaceous rocks of the Muschelkalk period imprints of the foot of some animal were discovered in the sandstones of Storeton Hill, in Cheshire, and in the New Red Sandstone of parts of Warwickshire, as well as in Thuringia, and Hesseburg in Saxony, which very much resembled the impression that might be made in soft clay by the outstretched fingers and thumb of a human hand. These traces were made by a species of Reptile furnished with four feet, the two fore-feet being much broader than the hinder two. The head, pelvis, and scapula only of this strange-looking animal have been found, but these are considered to have belonged to a gigantic air-breathing reptile closely connected with the Batrachians. It is thought that the head was not naked, but protected by a bony cushion; that its jaws were armed with conical teeth, of great strength and of a complicated structure. This curious and uncouth-looking creature, of which the woodcut Fig. 83 is a restoration, has been named the _Cheirotherium_, or _Labyrinthodon_, from the complicated arrangement of the cementing layer of the teeth. (See also Fig. 1, p. 12.) Another Reptile of great dimensions--which would seem to have been intended to prepare the way for the appearance of the enormous Saurians which present themselves in the Jurassic period--was the _Nothosaurus_, a species of marine Crocodile, of which a restoration has been attempted in PLATE XIII. opposite. [Illustration: XIII.--Ideal Landscape of the Muschelkalk Sub-period.] It has been supposed, from certain impressions which appear in the Keuper sandstones of the Connecticut river in North America, that Birds made their appearance in the period which now occupies us; the flags on which these occur by thousands show the tracks of an animal of great size (some 20 inches long and 4½ feet apart), presenting the impression of three toes, like some of the Struthionidæ or Ostriches, accompanied by raindrops. No remains of the skeletons of birds have been met with in rocks of this period, and the footprints in question are all that can be alleged in support of the hypothesis. [Illustration: Fig. 83.--Labyrinthodon restored. One-twentieth natural size.]