52 PERMIAN ERA. 



place to one entirely new. And this view is eagerly embraced 

 by those who argue for repeated interferences of creative 

 power. But not only is such a notion discountenanced by the 

 nature of the subsequent organisms, an advance to higher 

 species of particular classes, and to a new class the next in 

 the animal scale, but it is utterly overthrown by the recent 

 discovery of plants in the higher formations, (Trias of France 

 and certain Liassic beds in the Alps,) identical with carboni- 

 ferous species. Where such changes of fossils occur, the more 

 reasonable supposition is, that notwithstanding conformable- 

 ness of strata, a local suspension of deposits for a considerable 

 time is indicated, a time during which the usual changes of 

 species were proceeding, probably at their usual rate, and 

 which was sufficient to present something like a complete 

 change of forms when the deposits were re-commenced. ( 33 ) 



In the Permian formation, besides the principal orders of 

 animals which previously existed, we have the first undoubted 

 traces of another, succeeding fish in the animal scale, namely, 

 Reptiles- 



This is a most important event in our history, for it gives 

 us, for the first time, a class of vertebrate animals capable of 

 breathing the atmosphere and walking upon the land. We 

 shall presently see that it was a class destined for a long suc- 

 cession of ages to flourish over the soil, in many various and 

 some most formidable shapes, and without any superiors to 

 keep them in check. As yet, but a few bones of reptiles have 

 been discovered in the Zechstein of Thuringia in Upper 

 Saxony, and in quarries near Bristol. By Professor Owen, 

 who has carefully examined them, they are said to be 

 of the lacertilian or lizard order (specifically called by him, 

 palseosaurs, thecodonts, monitors, &c.), but for the most part 

 of gigantic size, and differing from modern lizards in very re- 

 markable characters of the vertebrae, teeth, and dermal plates. 

 To them, as to all the reptiles of this and several subsequent 

 great periods, belonged a fish-like form of the vertebral 

 column, in as far as its component bones were biconcave, or 

 shaped like a double egg-cup, a peculiarity regarded by this 

 eminent anatomist as probably fitting the animal for partially 



