HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION. 17 



liumnied with insect life, for there have been found ancestral forms 

 of dragon-flies, May-flies, white ants, cockroaches, crickets and lo- 

 custs. Some of these were of great size, with wings seven or eight 

 inches in length. Thirteen hundred species were found at one 

 place in France. The lagoons in which the coal growth flourished 

 were tenanted by numerous forms of life — mussel-like molluscs and 

 ganoid fishes. During the carboniferous period the highest form 

 of life was amphibian — modern frogs and toads, some small, others 

 measuring perhaps seven or eight feet. The marine life of the car- 

 boniferous period preserved in limestone includes corals, crinoids, 

 and shells. Crinoids are most numerous, massing into numerous 

 beds of limestone, hundreds of feet thick. Of crustaceans, trilo- 

 bites and brachipods disappear before the more highly organized 

 gastropods. The remains of fishes show sharp teeth and spines be- 

 longing to sharks. These were necessary to crush the hard bony 

 plates of ganoid fishes on which they would feed. Ganoid fishes 

 are not found in limestone. Sharks' teeth are sometimes found in 

 shale and coal seams. The inference is that the shark would some- 

 times invade the lagoons to feed upon the fish. Where found in 

 Canada : As already stated these rocks are largely developed in 

 Nova Scotia. There are none in Ontario. Carboniferous lime- 

 stone is found in the Rockies near Banff and at other points. The 

 coal seam.? there, however, are of a later age — cretaceous. 



Permian. — Following the prolonged subsidence of the carbonif- 

 erous period came a series of great terrestrial disturbances whereby 

 the lagoons and coal-growing swamps were in great measure ef- 

 faced. No great change took place in the character of the fossils, 

 however. The name of the period is derived from Perm in Russia, 

 where these rocks are well developed. They consist of red sand- 

 stones, marls, conglomerates, and brecchias with limestone and 

 dolomites. The sandstones are usually bright brick red in appear- 

 ance, owing to the presence of earthy peroxide of iron, which ce- 

 ments the particles of sand together. The shales and marls are 

 colored by the same pigment. This color is so characteristic that a 

 series of these rocks have been called the " New Red Sandstone." 

 Red strata are as a rule quite barren of organic remains, probably 



