THE DYNASTY OF FISHES. 241 



departed cycles. Why? It was an act of beneficence which 

 saved these relics of ancient dynasties from total destruction. 

 There was purpose, not accident, in the failure of their com- 

 plete extinction, and the assignment of the world exclusively 

 to more modern creatures. These are precious examples pre- 

 served in a museum. These are caskets filled with documents 

 from an olden time. The gar-pike and the sturgeon and the 

 shark are missionaries from the past to the present. Hear 

 them. They are preaching to man's intelligence. They are 

 unfolding the plans of Infinite Wisdom. "He that hath ears 

 to hear, let him hear." 



. SCENES KROM: THE COAI, 



HOW THE COAL BEDS WERE FORMED. 



WHILE the grizzly monsters of the ancient deep were 

 luxuriating in empire and blood, the premonitions of progress 

 were felt. The world was not made for them, but only an age 

 of the world. Behold, the tide bears out into the sea a float- 

 ing log. Its exterior is marked by peculiar and significant 

 impressions. They reveal the crest of a dynasty in the 

 vegetal world. They are the seal of a Sigitta'ria, or the scars 

 of a Lepidoden'dron. It has floated from the shore of a low- 

 lying and silent continent. There is a meager nursery there 

 where nature is training vegetation for thriftier times. In this 

 log is written the doom of the old Placoderms which had 

 stirred the Devonian mud of the Ohio sea-bottom. It is a 

 voice crying in the wilderness of waves, Prepare the way for 

 new land, new forms, new scenes, and new history. 



It was the beginning of the Carboniferous Age. The 

 tremors incident to the upthrow of a new belt of land had 

 strewn the submerged continental slope with the sandy ruins 

 of older lauds, and left the bed to mark the beginning of a 

 new system of strata. We know these hardened sands as 

 Waverly Sandstone and Marshall Sandstone. They were not 

 outspread in a day. There was a chapter of the world's organic 

 history enacted while these formations were laid down 



21 



