OP CREATION. 115 



THE SECOND OR MIDDLE EPOCH. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SECOND EPOCH : THE FORMATION 

 OF THE NEW RED SANDSTONE, OR TRIASSIC SERIES. 



OVER a large part of the known world, the close 

 of the first epoch, marked by great subsidences of 

 land, by the swallowing up of continents and islands 

 into the sea, and by accompanying violent disloca- 

 tions of the stratified crust of the globe, was of neces- 

 sity accompanied by the re-distribution of these frac- 

 tured materials of strata ; and, owing no doubt to the 

 great amount of trituration, the beds thus formed 

 contain but few remains of organic beings. These, 

 however, indicate the commencement of the new era. 



The presence of the new red sandstone, a forma- 

 tion consisting of sand and marl with rare local in- 

 terpolations of limestone, characterises this epoch ; 

 and, after this, until towards the close of the secondary 

 or middle period, we find few intermediate beds over 

 the whole of America ; * and the same is the case 

 with regard to the greater part of Asia and Australia, 

 as far as Geologists have yet been able to determine. 



In England we have this chapter of the history 



* There is, indeed, one magnificent exception in the Richmond 

 oolitic coal-field of Virginia, U. S., where the beds of coal are of vast 

 extent, and rival those of the true carboniferous period. 



