EEPTILES. 



61 



In the Permian formation, besides the principal orders of 

 animals which previously existed, there occur undoubted re- 

 mains of the reptilian class. As yet, only a few such bones 

 have been discovered in Zechstein of Thuringia in Upper 

 Saxony, and in quarries near Bristol. By Professor Owen, 

 who has carefully examined them, they are said to be of the 

 lacertilian or lizard order (specifically called by him palceosaurs, 

 thecodonts, monitors, etc.), but for the most part of gigantic size, 

 and differing from modern lizards in very remarkable characters 

 of the vertebrae, teeth, and dermal plates. To them, as to all 



FIG. 34. 



B 



A, Oblique view of the Vertebra of a Cod ; B, Section of three connected 

 vertebra, showing the inter vertebral spaces, 



the reptiles of this and several subsequent great periods, be- 

 longed a fish-like form of the vertebral column, in as far as its 

 component bones were biconcave, or shaped like a double egg- 

 strata containing the most universally diffused carboniferous types. In 

 short, fishes identical with those of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland 

 are invariably surmounted by the Stigmaria ficoides and the large Pro- 

 ducti of our British mountain limestone ; and thus the examination of 

 Russia has taught us, not only in this instance, but also in the overlying 

 Permian succession, that the great changes in animal life have not been 

 dependent on physical revolutions of the surface, but are distinct crea- 

 tions, independent of any proximate local causes ; though I would by no 

 means pretend to say that the grand operations of change which have 

 affected the conterminous regions of Russia did not tend to produce 

 these results." 



