THE ANCESTORS OF THE BIG TREES. 469 



hirbed by earthquakes eight million years ago as are the inhabitants of 

 New Jersey at the present time by the sinking of their eastern coast. 

 Events moved with inconceivable slowness then as now, though, of 

 course, progress was quickened now and then. Our Jurassic sojourner 

 would find everything strange. In the marshes flourished great ferns 

 with undivided evergreen fronds (Marattiacea?), and numerous repre- 

 sentatives of our modern royal and cinnamon ferns (Osmundaceae). 

 Close by, ancient tree-ferns (Cyatheacea?) vied with an amazing variety 

 of forms known as cycads — curious plants of which the commonly cul- 

 tivated sago palm is a familiar example. In the dryer spots flourished 

 the numerous ancestors of the ginkgo, the maiden-hair tree, that curi- 

 ous relic of bygone days, which has been saved from extinction in 

 modern times by the loving care of the priests about the temples of 

 China and Japan. 



The only representatives of those flowering plants which are dom- 

 inant in the vegetation of the world to-day, the Angiosperms. were the 

 little-known and curious (probably) semi-aquatic plants with netted 

 veined leaves, which have been named pro-angiosperms. Ancient lung- 

 fishes, gar pikes and crocodiles haunt the rivers; out at sea are swarms 

 of sharks and ganoid fishes. Bat-like flying reptiles are the common 

 denizens of the air, the primitive toothed birds with long reptilian tails 

 being in the minority. Sea-inhabiting reptiles of gigantic *size, long- 

 necked plesiosaurs and dolphin-like ichthyosaurs, land-inhabiting 

 dinosaurs (the name means terrible lizard), of immense size and 

 bizarre form, are the dominant creatures, while the noble class of 

 mammals with man at their summit is still but a promise and, so far 

 as the fossils indicate, represented by only a few forms of mouse-like 

 size. The continents had not yet assumed their modern dimensions. 

 Such great mountain chains as the Alps. Himalayas and Eockies had 

 not been elevated; and yet the sequoia flourished and its cones were 

 not very different from those found in California at the present time. 



The next succeeding geological period, the Cretaceous, continued 

 to be the age of gigantic reptiles, some of which are shown in Fig. 4. 

 The two left-hand monsters figured were between twenty and forty 

 feet long, and were ancient Jerseyites, the spoonbill, a herbivorous, 

 and the leaper, a carnivorous, species. Occasional bones and teeth of 

 these and other related creatures are found in the marl beds that were 

 deposited in the sea off the eastern coast of those days. The Missis- 

 sippi valley was part of a great gulf that extended northward from the 

 present Gulf of Mexico almost to the Arctic circle, and was a veritable 

 summer sea, peopled with gigantic sea-lizards (mosasaurs), and with 

 a host of other strange forms. Flying reptiles with a spread of fifteen 

 to twenty feet circled overhead. 



