THE JURA'SSIC EPOCH. 197 



Fig. 307. Labyrinthodon pachygnatus. (Owen.) 



The island of Var was increased from these sandstones and con- 

 chylian limestone ; the Vosges and Black Forest were also con- 

 siderably augmented, the one to the west, in Lorraine, the other to 

 the east, extending into Germany, and uniting various islands 

 which had been separate till then. The same was the case with 

 different islets which already marked the place of the British 

 islands, and were then united to a continuous land by tria'ssic depo- 

 sits upheaved between them, and with them. But at the same 

 time that the new lands were raised above water, there were great 

 subsidences in those which previously existed. The land which 

 extended from Cherbourg to Perpignan, was then divided towards 

 Poictiers, forming a stiait, now occupied by the jura'ssic deposits ; 

 it was variously divided on its borders, and almost cut again towards 

 Rodez. That which extended from Nice towards Inspruck was 

 entirely sunk, to receive the new deposit which covers it. If per- 

 chance there existed, at the period of the coal, some portions of 

 land where Paris, London, &c., now are, everything leads to the 

 belief that they then disappeared, for the jura'ssic formation 

 appears to be prolonged everywhere beneath the soil which serves 

 them as a base. 



All the data on the state of western Europe, at the period of 

 which we speak, are furnished by the presence and disposition of 

 the jura'ssic deposits. Developed on a vast scale, and upheaved 

 later from the bosom of the waters, they clearly show what was 

 then the configuration of the lands around which they weitj formed 

 under the sea. 



The ocean of the jura'ssic epoch also had its peculiar characters. 

 It was inhabited by saurians, eminently swimmers, the ich'thyo- 

 sau'rus and plei'siosau'rus, whose paws, in form of paddles, remind 

 us of those of the chelonians of the present day ; these voracious 

 animals, all aquatic, took the place of the sauroid fishes of the car- 

 boni'ferous group, which had now disappeared. At the same 

 period lived those flying saurians, called pteroda'ctyls, which 

 pir-opled the air and completed the series of singular creatures of an 

 ancient creation, now entirely annihilated, the exterior forms of 

 which Dr. Buckland has attempted to paint from the skeleton ( fig. 

 308). 



These sea? had lost the produces, and spirifers had almost di- 

 17 



