CHAPTER VIII. 



THE MESOZOIC AGES. 



Physically, the transition from the Permian to the 

 Trias is easy. In the domain of life a great gulf lies 

 between ; and the geologist whose mind is filled with 

 the forms of the Palaeozoic period, on rising into 

 the next succeeding beds, feels himself a sort of 

 Rip Van Winkle, who has slept a hundred years and 

 awakes in a new world. The geography of our 

 continents seems indeed to have changed little from 

 the time of the Permian to that next succeeding 

 group which all geologists recognise as the beginning 

 of the Mesozoic or Middle Age of the world's history, 

 the Triassic period. Where best developed, as in 

 Germany, it gives us the usual threefold series, con- 

 glomerates and sandstones below, a shelly limestone 

 in the middle, and sandstones and marls above. 

 Curiously enough, the Germans, recognising this 

 tripartite character here more distinctly than in their 

 other formations, named this the Trias or triple group, 

 a name which it still retains, though as we have 

 seen it is by no means the earliest of the triple groups 

 of strata. In England, where the middle limestone 

 is absent, it is a '' New Red Sandstone,^' and the 

 same name may be appropriately extended to Eastern 

 America, where bright red sandstones are a charac- 



