132 THE MIDDLE PAST. 



epoch have been proved to be of oolitic age,* and, as inves- 

 tigation is pushed still further, other areas, in both hemi- 

 spheres, will be found to belong to the same geological 

 system. 



When we direct our attention to the fauna we find the 

 lower marine animals abundantly represented, showing that 

 in the oolitic seas there were those varied conditions of 

 warmth, depth, sea-bottom, and shore-line essential to their 

 dissemination and development. Sponges (spongid) are 

 by no means rare ; foraminiferous organisms (lituola, rota- 

 linci, spirolina, &c.) are scattered throughout the forma- 

 tion ; and corals (thamnastrcea, montlivaltia, isastrcea, 

 &c.) of varied and elegant forms occur in vast profusion, 

 and point to a time when the oolitic areas of Europe and 

 Asia were instinct with coral-life, and dotted and barred 

 with reefs like the existing seas of the southern hemisphere. 

 Encrinites, though now on the wane, still star the sea- bed 

 with their elegant forms (pejitacrinus, apiocrinus, &c.); 

 sea-urchins (cidaris, hemicidaris, diadema, echinus, &c.) 

 throng the marine strata in increasing numbers ; and free- 

 floating star-fishes (astropectcn, amphiura, and ophioderma), 

 apparently replacing the encrinites, now approximate in gen- 

 eric aspects to those of the present ocean. Annelids, like 

 the living serpulce, cement their tortuous tubes to stones and 

 dead-shells ; barnacles (potticipes) attach their many-valved 

 mansions to rocks and floating timber ; minute crustaceans 

 (cypris, cypridea, and estheria) moult their bivalved crusts 

 in myriads in the muddy creeks and estuaries ; while the 

 higher Crustacea (glyphcea, enjon, and megaclieirus) approxi- 



* The coals of Southern India, of Borneo, Labuan, Zebu in the Philip- 

 pine Islands, &c., are now ascertained to be of oolitic age; to which 

 epoch also it is suspected that most of those of China and Japan belong ; 

 as well as that of Virginia in America, and other localities. The oolitic 

 coal-fields of Eastern Yorkshire and Brora in Sutherlandshire have been 

 long known to British geologists. 



