90 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



ated with them, were perhaps girt round with innu- 

 merable creepers and parasitic plants, climbing to the 

 topmost branches of the most lofty amongst them, 

 and enlivening by the bright and vivid colours of 

 their flowers the dark and gloomy character of the 

 great masses of vegetation. 



Forests like these (and I have in this description 

 confined myself to a strict analogy, and have very 

 cautiously abstained from transgressing the bounds of 

 probability) are at the present day remarkable even 

 in islands of large size, for their death-like silence, 

 and for the almost total absence of living beings. A 

 few birds and insects seem to form almost the whole 

 population. In many cases no quadruped exists over 

 extensive districts ; and it is manifest that most of such 

 islands have depended upon migrations for their in- 

 habitants, so that they offer no guide whatever to the 

 naturalist, when he wishes to determine from them 

 the indigenous animals or vegetables of the district. 



If, however, this is the case with the islands of the 

 Polynesian archipelago, it cannot be doubted that the 

 fragments of organic matter carried down into the 

 mud and sand to form coal, and deposited in the creeks 

 and at the mouths of rivers in ancient times, must 

 be looked upon as offering still less evidence with re- 

 spect to terrestrial animals ; and what evidence exists 

 on this subject is almost confined to about half a 

 dozen isolated specimens of organic remains. 



The conditions and contents of the newer forma- 

 tions of the secondary epoch, render it also proba- 

 ble that land animals, if existing at all, were yet more 

 rare in the older period than afterwards, since, in 

 the few localities where fresh-water fossils are found 



