84 Feather stonhavgh's Geological Report. 



habits were, he can, with the aid of contingent observations, 

 decide upon reasonable grounds, where were the deep and 

 where were the shallow places of these now petrified oceans. 

 Turning to the land, he sees the proofs of a luxuriance of 

 vegetation unequalled by any thing in modern nature, yet in 

 strict harmony with natural principles : still the evidences of 

 terrestrial animals, for whose use plants are supposed to grow, 

 are wanting ; but he is satisfied to believe they might then 

 not have been called into existence, and that an extent of 

 vegetable growth, of which we cannot form an adequate con- 

 ception, was intended solely for the accumulation of those car- 

 bonized deposites without which our own race must ever 

 have remained in the most rude and comfortless state. 



The next great group of organized bodies may be con- 

 sidered as extending to the tertiary, and is, as has before been 

 remarked, with some exceptions, deficient in the United States, 

 but in Europe it discloses organized forms of a character that 

 almost places them in the regions of romance. Although some 

 changes are observed, the general progression is going steadily 

 on. The belemnites take the place of orthocera, to which 

 they are akin in structure ; ammonites begin to appear in great 

 abundance, especially in the oolitic system, the floors of some 

 of the beds of the lias and Oxford clay being sometimes found 

 studded with them, furnishing a certain key to the identifica- 

 tion of rocks. Trilobites give place to other Crustacea, the 

 astacus, or representative of the recent cray fish. The fishes 

 are continued in this group belonging to the same orders as 

 the last, but the species of the successive formations are always 

 distinct. The saurian reptiles now begin to appear. The 

 monitor is found before the deposition of the oolitic series, 

 together with various saurians in the beds which precede the 

 lias, Here we find an astonishing quantity of these voracious 

 animals, allied to those crocodilean reptiles which frequent the 

 bays, the estuaries, and the rivers of our own southern lati- 

 tudes. Various species of the ichthyosaurus ^ some individuals 



