CARBONIFEROUS ERA. 



with rain-drops, and crested with ripple-marks. In the 

 stagnant lagoons, minute crustaceans, like cypris and cy fli- 

 p/re, swarm in myriads ; a few species of trilobite still 



1, Woodocrinus ; 2, Cyathocrinus . 3, Palaechinus ; 4, Plates and Spine 

 of Archseocidaris. 



linger in the muddy creeks ; eurypterites are on the wane, 

 and forms like the limulus or king-crab of the Indian Ocean 

 now make their appearance. For the first time, too, we 

 discover the crusts and wing-cases of beetle-like insects, 

 showing that the vegetation of the period afforded them 

 abundance of food ; and that garbage, perhaps of an ani- 

 mal nature, was there also, though we have not been enabled 

 to trace the connection. Every order of molluscan life is 

 busy in the waters bryozoa, like the flustra and retepora 

 of our own seas, spread their cells in symmetrical network 

 on dead shells and broken encrinites ; brachiopods, like 



