FIFTH PALEOZOIC PERIOD. 



N. 5 W., and S. 5 E. M. d'Orbigny assigns to the same 

 epoch the convulsion which produced the Chiquitean system of 

 mountains in Bolivian Peru ; and to the disturbance produced by 

 one or all of these simultaneous convulsions, may be ascribed the 

 destruction of the whole animal and vegetable kingdom which 

 closed this fourth Palceozoic period. 



FIFTH PALEOZOIC PEEIOD. 



287. The strata which, in the regular series lie over the 

 Carboniferous stage, have received the name of the Permian, 

 from the Russian province of Perm, on the confines of Europe and 

 Asia, which is traversed by the Ural mountains, this being the 

 region in which the geological characteristics of this stage were 

 first studied and determined by Sir R. Murchison. The com- 

 ponent strata are commonly known to geologists as those of 

 the magnesian limestone and new red sandstone, in contra- 

 distinction to the old red sandstone of the third Palaeozoic or 

 Devonian stage. That this stage has been separated from the 

 carboniferous by a geological convulsion is rendered manifest by 

 the discordance of the stratification in some places, and by the 

 isolation of the stages in others, the Permian stage being found 

 in some places without the Carboniferous under it, showing that 

 it was there deposited in parts of the earth's surface which were 

 dry land during the Carboniferous period. 



288. The convulsion which terminated the Carboniferous period 

 buried beneath its ruins nearly a hundred genera which never 

 again appeared. Of the Mollusca and Radiata alone, exclusive 

 of the other classes, 1047 species were destroyed by this catas- 

 trophe. All the vast forests which covered the extensive tracts 

 of land were similarly buried, and form, as already explained, the 

 coal-fields now found in the Carboniferous strata. This catas- 

 trophe was probably followed, as in the former case, by a period 

 of tranquillity, during which a suspension of all animal and 

 vegetable life took place. The seas, meanwhile, returning into 

 their beds, the land was again divided from the waters, and the 

 outlines of the new continents and islands became defined. The 

 earth being thus gradually prepared, Omnipotence once more 

 exerted its creative power, re-peopled the world, and clothed the 

 land with vegetation. 



289. The new animal kingdom, as far as its remains inform us, 

 consisted of eleven new, and forty-five revived genera, making a 

 total of fifty-six. Two of these belonged to the class of reptiles, 

 twelve to that of fishes, and the remainder to the inferior 

 divisions of the animal kingdom, as shown in the following 



53 



