THE PEN E AN AND VOSGEAN EPOCHS. 195 



The fresh waters which fed the coal marshes contained, as u 

 appears, few conchi'ferous mollusks ; the debris, which are rarely 

 found, resemble anodonta and unio. Fishes were numerous, in 

 some localities ; they belonged to the genera palioni'scus (fig. 56, 

 p. 48), and ambly'pterus, living, without doubt, in. the rivulets 

 which meandered at the bottom of abrupt fractures of the ancient 

 formation. 



Penine epoch. The disturbance caused by the upheaval of 

 the north of England, appears to have exerted more influence on 

 the surface, of the then uncovered lands, than on their extent and 

 form. Only the bottom of 'the sea, where the coal-beds of Eng- 

 land and Belgium were formed, was elevated in part to escape, 

 like all France, to the penine formation. On the other hand, 

 a small corner of the south-west of Vosges must have sunk 

 under water, to receive the red sandstones which there cover 

 the coal formation. Further, in Mansfield the presence of the 

 penine formation, which is there developed on a great scale with 

 its shell-limestones, demonstrate the submersion of the country 

 beneath sea-water. It was also beneath the sea, in the county of 

 York, that magnesian limestone was deposited, which there repre- 

 sents the whole formation of this epoch. 



Very little is known of the terrestrial flora of that time, for we 

 find little, save the algae in the bitu'minous schists of Mansfield, 

 and some sili'cified trunks of co'nifers in the sandstone. Deposits 

 of coal suddenly ceased to form, and it seems from that time there 

 were neither ponds nor rivulets on the lands ; nevertheless, th^re 

 were still divers fishes of the genus palioni'scus, which lived per- 

 haps as well in salt as in fresh water. The land was for the rrst 

 time inhabited by saurian reptiles resembling the iguana and moni- 

 tor, the remains of which are found in the cuprous schists. r J he 

 seas beneath which all these deposits were formed, contained the 

 same genera, often the same species of mollusks and radiata as 

 those in which the carboni'ferous deposits were formed. 



Fosgean epoch. The system of Hainault, in dislocating the 

 coal formation and ridging- the surface of the land, had little in- 

 fluence on its form. In the Vosges some of the points where the 

 red sandstone was deposited were elevated, around Saint-Die, 

 Schelestadt, Montbelliard, and escaped the succeeding formations : 

 while all the rest of the chain, which had escaped the deposits of 

 the red sandstone, and consequently found elevated at this epoch, 

 must have been sunk now to receive the vosgean sandstone : the 

 same has taken place in the Black Forest. 



Such was the state of things in this modification, that animals 

 could not have lived on this part of the earth, and that plants, if 

 any then existed on the surrounding soil, could not have been car- 

 ried under the waters except in very small numbers. 



The trias zpoch. After the system of the Rhine, subsequent to 



