PERUIAN AGE AND CLOSE OF THE PALAEOZOIC. 171 



America the case was different. In all that immense 

 area which extends from the Atlantic to the plains 

 east of the Mississippi, we know bat little Permian, 

 though a portion of the rocks reckoned as Permo- 

 carboniferous in Northern Nova Scotia, Prince 

 Edward Island, and Virginia, should probably be 

 included in this group. If once more extensive, they 

 may possibly be covered up in some places by more 

 modern deposits, or may have been swept away by 

 denudation in the intervening ages ; but even in these 

 cases we should expect to find larger remains of them. 

 Their absence would seem to indicate that a vast, and 

 in many parts rugged and elevated, continent repre- 

 sented North America in the Permian period. We 

 know something of the animals and plants which lived 

 on this continent, and that, while the plants are 

 closely allied to those of the Carboniferous, the reptiles 

 present points of approximation to those of the 

 Mesozoic. 



Our picture of the Permian World has not been 

 inviting, yet in many respects it was a world more like 

 that in which we live than was any previous one. It 

 certainly presented more of variety and grand physical 

 features than any of the previous ages ; and we might 

 have expected that on its wide and varied continents 

 some new and higher forms of life would have been 

 introduced. But it seems rather to have been intended 

 to blot out the old Palaeozoic life, as an arrangement 

 which had been fully tried and served its end, pre- 

 paratory to a new beginning in the succeeding age. 



