582 SCIENTIFIC RECREATIONS. 



recreations we can do little more. We shall find in many places in England 

 tree trunks in the sandy shore, and ample evidence that a forest has been at 

 one time submerged in that spot. So inland the land sank down again and 

 again in successive periods water, mud, soil, vegetable growth succeeded, to 

 be again submerged and form a new coal seam for the use of man, who was 

 destined to appear after the lapse of ages. 



THE PERMIAN PERIOD. 



At length the land remained undisturbed. It sank no more, and the 

 trees waved luxuriously over the buried forests of past ages, and another 

 cycle set in called the PERMIAN, from the ancient kingdom of Permia, where 

 all the features of that period are exhibited on a very grand scale, and which 

 extended for several hundred miles between the Ural mountains and the 



Fig. 669. Impressions of feet of Cheirotherium 



Volga. In the Permian period we have the progression of animal life more 

 distinctly developed than in the Carboniferous system, which immediately 

 preceded it. It is true there are indications in the latter that curious animals, 

 called the Cheirotherium and the Labyrinthodon, were alive then, and the 

 remains of numerous insects, such as beetles and crickets, have been found ; 

 but the Permian developed them, and reptiles, saurians, and lizards have 

 been traced ; but as Sir R. Murchison states, throughout the whole extent 

 the animals are of a single type. We have the hand-like impressions of the 

 feet of the Cheirotherium, so called from the Greek " cheir," a hand. The 

 soil appears to have been very soft, and peculiarly adapted to receive 

 impressions, and which having been in many places covered over with a 

 stratum of fine sand, and then abandoned by the sea, the whole has hardened 

 into stone, and being now separated, the one contains their footprints, and 

 the other perfect casts of them ! Nor are these footmarks all that these 

 sandstones have to tell us of their day ; for the ripples of the waves, and 



