36 Beign of Fishes. 



the old red sandstone, or even in the coal formation, inso- 

 much that we have a good right to call the epoch when these 

 formations were deposited the reign of fishes. This fact, to 

 which I have already often called the attention of palaeonto- 

 logists, is confirmed, in the most absolute manner, by all re- 

 searches which have of late been undertaken in reference to 

 the fossils of the old red sandstone. In a few years, the in- 

 vestigations of geologists have increased the number of 

 known species tenfold ; and the zeal with which the study is 

 pursued, in the two countries where this system of strata 

 appears in its greatest development, that is to say, in England 

 and Russia, will undoubtedly still lead to numerous and im- 

 portant discoveries. But it is easy, even now, to foresee that 

 these discoveries will come within the laws which the species 

 already known have revealed to us ; that is, they will be con- 

 fined to the class of fishes as regards the vertebrate depart- 

 ment ; and that neither reptiles nor mammifera will be found 

 in the strata of the old red sandstone. 



I am well aware that a recent author has imagined that he 

 has found bones of all the classes of vertebrata in this forma- 

 tion. But the erroneous determinations on which such con- 

 clusions are founded, are easily estimated at their true 

 value, and the tortoises, lizards, crocodiles, and pachyderms, 

 with which he has chosen to people these ancient deposits, 

 have successively been arranged in their proper place; that is, 

 in the lowest class of vertebrata, from which a rash hand had 

 removed them. In treating of the families and species which 

 characterize the system in question, I have shewn the falsity 

 of the notion which makes all the classes of vertebrata go 

 back to the most remote antiquity ; so that it now remains 

 well proved that all we know of the remains of vertebrata in 

 the formations anterior to the Zechstein, belong exclusively 

 to the class of fishes. 



I shall not insist further on the importance of this fact, 

 when it is viewed in relation to the organic characters of the 

 creations which have successively peopled the earth. I have 

 already laid before the public, through another channel, my 

 views on the development which the different creations have 

 undergone during the history of our planet. But what I 



