NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 73 



they are more tslightly marked than is tlie case with 

 their fauiily at the present day, as if the changes of 

 temperature had been within a narrower range. 



Such was the vegetation of the carbonigenous era, 

 composed of forms at the bottom of the botanical scale, 

 fiowerless, fruitless, but luxuriant and abundant beyond 

 what the most favoured spots on earth can now show. 

 The rigidity of the leaves of its plants, and the absence 

 of fleshy fruits and farinaceous seeds, unfitted it to afford 

 nutriment to animals ; and, monotonous in its forms, and 

 destitute of brilliant colourings its sward probably un- 

 enlivened by any of the smaller flowering herbs, its 

 shades uncheered by the hum of insects, or the music of 

 birds, it must have been but a sombre scene to a human 

 visitant. But neither man nor any other animals were 

 then in existence to look for such uses or such beauties in 

 this vegetation. It was serving other and equally impor- 

 tant ends, clearing (probably) the atmosphere of matter 

 noxious to animal life, and storing up mineral masses 

 which were in long subsequent ages to prove of the 

 greatest service to the human race, even to the extent of 

 favouring the progress of its civilisation. 



The animal remains of this era are not numerous, in 

 comparison with those which go before, or those which 

 come after. The mountain limestone, indeed, deposited 

 at the commencement of it, abounds unusually in poly- 

 piaria and crinoidea ; but when we ascend to the coal- 

 beds themselves, the case is altered, and these marine 

 i-emains altogether disappear. We have then only a 

 limited variety of conchifers and shell mollusks, with 

 fragments of a few species of fishes, and these are rarely 

 or never found in the coal seams, but in the shales alter- 

 nating with them. At this time, the sauroids, a family 



