EECREATIYE SCIENCE. 



235 



Around the 

 old Devonian 

 uplands, covered 

 with pines of 

 Bombre green, 

 and feathery 

 araucarige, and 

 studded with 

 luxuriant groves 

 of tree-ferns, the 

 dark soil brought 

 down by the 

 great sludge- 

 laden rivers, 

 then draining a 

 vast continent 

 (lying to thewest 

 of our present 

 island), of which 

 we now know 

 but fragmentary 

 portions of its 

 outlines, was 

 daily spreading 

 further and fur- 

 ther, daily in- 

 creasing the 

 broad low shores 

 rank with dense 

 masses of vegeta- 

 tion that formed 

 numberless te- 

 pid, humid jun- 

 gles, dark and 

 dismal. Amidst 

 the dull lurid 

 foliage, unenli- 

 vened by flow- 

 ers, noisome in- 

 sects bred, and 

 through the 

 mouldering pu- 

 trescent swamps 

 teeming with 

 fungi sprouting 

 from the rotten 



\ft. in. 



> 4i Coalandblackshale. 



■ 7 Indurated clay. 



7 Whinstone. 



■ 4 Indurated clay. 



3 Coal, shale, and 

 sandstone. 



3 Coal, shale, and 

 sandstone. 



9 Sandstone. 



3 Inflammable shale. 



4 Indurated clay. 



5 Inflammable shale. 



9 Indurated clay. 



4 8 Indurated clay. 



4 Indurated clay and 

 sand. 



V 4 Sand-rock. 



I 2 6 Sand-rock. 



1 2 Sand-rock. 



■ 5 7 Indurated clay. 



9 Whinstone. 



3 Indurated clay. 



4 Coal. 

 6 Black clay. 



h 



^==^ ;. 4 8 Indurated clay. 

 I 

 J 



6 9 Sandstone. 



Lign. 1. — Example of Coal-mea- 

 sures and Intermediate Strata. 



wood, sluggish-moving reptiles and great 

 newt-like beasts crawled with hideous slimy 

 limbs along, while in the black pools and 

 lakes innumerable, the swarming shoals of 

 harmless mud-fish raised swelling domes of 

 inky water, as, flurried by the great megal- 

 ichthys, or chased by other wolfish antagonists, 

 they rushed for safety to take refuge amongst 

 the dense tangles of matted trailing roots. 



Prom the ruins of Nimroud some one 

 brought away a brick, on which, beside the. 

 initial letter inscribed upon it, were the im- 

 printed footsteps of a little weasel which 

 had run over it before it was dried, and thus, 

 though difierently, the little animal and the 

 mighty Assyrian king stamped the signs of 

 their existence on the same common bit of 

 clay. So some of the reptiles that lived in 

 the rank groves and muddy lagoons of the 

 carboniferous shores, but of which not a bone 

 has yet been found, nor any other remains 

 discovered, are known to us still by the track- 

 marks of their ancient walks, preserved in 

 the carboniferous shales amidst the wreck 

 of sculptured lepidodendrons and pillar-like 

 sigillariaj. 



Now the descending land was won over 

 by the tide and the rotting jungles buried 

 under shelly sand, heaped up by ocean 

 waves. Banks of encrinites and shells spread 

 far inland over the estuary silts and peat- 

 bogs, to be again covered with dense vege- 

 tation, and again submerged. Again and 

 again, by such alternations, was the carbon- 

 iferous region made the platform of many 

 successive stages of coal-material. 



In the open sea the coral polypes were at 

 their wondrous labours, and in its depths 

 cephalopods crawled amongst densely-studded 

 groups of spirifers, and other shells, while 

 the degraded and decomposed debris of those 

 lime-secreting creatures was gradually massed 

 into bank upon bank of calcareous rock, 

 examples of which are presented to us in the 

 beautiful black and gray marbles of Ireland 

 of Derbyshire, and of Belgium. 



