114 THE FAR PAST. 



he feels as convinced of their occurrence as if he had stood 

 on the river-bank of the period, and seen the muddy cur- 

 rent roll down its burden of vegetable drift ; threaded the 

 channels of the estuary, gloomy with the gigantic growth 

 of swamp and jungle ; or sailed over the shallow waters of 

 its archipelago, studded with reef-fringed volcanic islands, 

 and dipped his oar into the forests of encrinites that waved 

 below. 



The Permian period, to which we now turn, presents 

 itself more in the light of a new rock-formation than a 

 distinct life-period. Many of its forms are identical with 

 those of the coal period, and we may, without doing great 

 violence to fact, regard it as the continuation and close of 

 the carboniferous era specialised by local disturbances 

 in the areas of deposit, and the consequent dying out of 

 many genera and species. Perhaps the most remarkable 

 feature is the rapid disappearance of the coal flora, and its 

 restriction to a few higher forms of tree-ferns and conifer- 

 ous trees, as if the low swampy jungle had been upheaved 

 into higher and drier lands unfavourable to the growth of 



1, Palseoniscus Frieslebeni 2, Platysomus striatus 



sigillaria, calamites, equisetums, and lepidodendra. The 

 gigantic sauroid fishes have also disappeared with the 



