SUMMARY OF THE HISTORY. 667 



other regions, the terrestrial life of that very interesting era. The 

 wonderful histoiy of the Carboniferous period has, however, been so 

 fully detailed above, and is in itself so ample, that I shrink from any 

 attempt to sum it up here. 



We now reach a blank in the geological history of Acadia — a 

 blank represented only l)y certain elevations and disturbances of the 

 Carboniferous beds, Avhich occurred during the period occupied in 

 some other regions in the deposition of the Permian rocks. This was 

 succeeded by the local but important volcanic outbursts which accom- 

 panied the probably rapid deposition of the Triassic red sandstone, an 

 association of volcanic phenomena with the hasty deposit of coarse 

 sediment stained with oxide of iron, which had occurred before in the 

 Lower Carboniferous, in the Lower Devonian, and in the far earlier 

 Huronian. 



The Trias of Prince Edwai'd Island alone gives us, in the bones of 

 Bathygnathus, a single glimpse of the reptilian life of the Mesozoic 

 "age of reptiles," so richly exhibited in some other countries. 



A blank in this monumental history of enormous length succeeds 

 the Triassic period, and Acadia with the neighbouring parts of North 

 America was probably, during these long Mesozoic and Tertiaiy ages, 

 a part of an extensive continental area, in which animals and plants, 

 characteristic of those periods, no doubt flourished, but have, so far 

 as we know, left no traces of their existence. 



The next vicissitude of which we have any record is that mysterious 

 glacial period, which I am inclined to regard as one of subsidence 

 under an ice-laden sea, in so far at least as Acadia is concerned. 

 Certain it is that no deposit similar to the boulder clay had occurred 

 previously in Acadia, unless indeed we may regard some of the 

 coarser conglomerates of the Carboniferous period, as evidence that 

 ice was grounding on the coasts on which the vegetation of the coal 

 formation was flourishing. Probably at this period Nova Scotia and 

 New Brunswick were in circumstances very nearly the same with that 

 of the great Newfoundland banks at present. Under any view, 

 nothing is more remarkable in the geological history of the earth than 

 the almost universal subsidence and glaciation which seem to have 

 affected the Northern Hemisphere at this period, geologically so 

 recent. Little by little, terrace after terrace, the land rose from the 

 glacial submergence ; and, as it rose, it began to be peopled with a 

 gigantic race of quadrupeds which gradually gave place to those now 

 existing; the extinction of the Mammoth and Mastodon having pro- 

 bably had relation to the gradual increase of the surface of the 

 land, and its wanner and drier summers. Had these creatures 



