now REPRESENTED IN ACADIA, 127 



different distribution of land and water, as supposed by Sir Charles 

 Lyell, and by a larger proportion of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, 

 as suggested by Tyndall and Hunt. For these reasons, and others 

 to which I shall refer in a succeeding chapter, there is no room left 

 for homotaxis, as distinguished from contemporaneity, in the case of 

 the Carboniferous ; and if so, there can be little in that of the Trias. 

 The Permian was thus a real period in Eastern America, but a period 

 without extant monuments, except those which relate to merely 

 mechanical movements of the sediments previously formed, — a period 

 of breaking down, not of building up. 



Still the Permian in Eastern America must have been a time of 

 life and activity. If, as seems most probable, this country was, 

 at the close of the Carboniferous period, raised up to a height some- 

 what similar to that of the continent in the present day, this Permian 

 land must have been inhabited by plants and animals. AVe can 

 imagine it clothed with a flora similar to that of the European 

 Permian, and inhabited by the Protorosaurs and other animal forms of 

 the period, and we can imagine those changes going on by which 

 the Palaeozoic flora and fauna were replaced by those of the Mesozoic 

 period. In the singular little deposit of Miocene plants at Brandon 

 in Vermont, we have evidence that this was the case in those Tertiary 

 periods of which, as already stated, we have no formations in Acadia ; 

 and perhaps there may yet be found some patch of Permian rock, 

 formed in some lake or estuary, which may reveal to us the history 

 of this as yet unrecorded passage in the geological history of our 

 country. 



