SttldHUHtthn mul flair 



air was heavy with nirlxmir acid, tccmin;,' \\ith 

 moisture, hot and steamy with tropical ht-.-it. 



' Flowering plants were few in numlM-r, tln-ir 

 blossoms small and inconspicuous, and m-itlu-r 

 bees nor butterflies existed, for all these are de- 

 pendent one upon another; nectar must -.\i*t 

 to attract the insect, the insect in turn must In- 

 present to bear pollen from flower to flown-. 

 Birds, too, with color and song, were still in 

 the future. Compared with the present, it was 

 a colorless, gloomy, silent world, peopled by 

 amphibians and reptiles, but not without it- 

 compensations in the utter absence of toil 

 and care. Such was the realm of the Stego- 

 cephala. 



While, so far as numbers go, amphibians 

 reached their maximum during the period of 

 coal-forming forests, their culminating point in 

 size was in the Trias, just }>efore tlu-ir extinc- 

 tion. Sharks and armored fishes had declined, 

 dinosaurs had not become paramount, and dur- 

 ing the interregnum there was, so to speak, a 

 silent struggle for supremacy between amphib- 

 ian and reptilian types. Until very recently 



123 



