296 Henry Woodward — Daivn of Life on the Earth. 



Prof. Pleiniuger to be those of a very small Mammal, called Microlestes 

 antiquus, believed to have been a minute plant-eating marsupial. 



In the Muschelkalk a curious fossil, determined by Prof. Owen to be 

 a Saurian, and named Placodiis (originally referred by Miinster and 

 Agassiz to the class of Fishes), has been met with, which had palatal 

 teeth, and fed no doubt on shell-bearing Mollusca, for crushing 

 which its broad flat teeth seem well adapted. 



This Muschelkalk also yields a beautiful form of stone-lily 

 (Encrinus liliiformis), also another genus of CepJialopods allied to 

 the Ammonites, named Ceratites. 



Here geologists draw the line between Palseozoic and Neozoic. 



The latest Paleeozoic formation is the Permian, a series of rocks 

 not rich in fossils, but marked in this country by limestones rich in 

 magnesia, often forming concretionary masses termed " botryoidal," 

 and largely developed in Carinthia, where these Dolomite limestones 

 form vast isolated pillar-like mountains, which have been compared 

 to ancient coral reefs dolomitized and changed to stone, and lifted 

 high and dry out of the sea, like some big wreck cast ashore, to tell 

 of their former submergence. 



These Permian-beds are also largely Copper-bearing in Germany, 

 particularly in Thuringia. Productus horridus, Spirifer undtdaius, 

 and a few more shells, with branches of a Coniferous tree, together 

 with certain fishes, such as Platysomiis and Palceoniscus, mark these beds. 



Leaving, however, these comparatively barren rocks, we next 

 come, in descending order, upon what must ever be looked upon as 

 the most wonderful assemblage of fossil organisms in the entire 

 stratified series — the Carboniferous formation, with its Coal-measures, 

 which attain, in the South-Wales Coal-field, an aggregate thickness 

 of 12,000 feet, and comprise 100 seams of coal. Every one of these 

 seams has its roof-shale and its under-clay. The roof-shale marks a 

 break in the conditions of vegetable growth, decay, and accumulation 

 caused by an inundation of foreign matter, probably introduced by 

 a local subsidence of the area, to be again re-elevated, and again 

 covered by a new forest of Carboniferous trees. 



Every under-clay is full of Stigmarice, the roots of the larger trees 

 which contributed by their growth and decay to form the Coal. 



What were the trees of the Forests of the Coal-period ? Were they 

 Oaks ? or Beeches ? or Pines ? or Gum-trees ? or Palms ? No, none 

 of these, but, strange as it may seem, humble Cryptogams were in this 

 far-off period the precursors of the Sequoia and the Oak ; the little 

 Liverwort and humble Club-moss are the modern representatives of 

 the Lepidodendron and the Sigillaria ; whilst the common Mare's-tail 

 or Equisetum of our ditches was then a giant Calamite, associated 

 with vast numbers of ferns, some of which were arborescent in habit. 



In its stagnant or slowly moving streams the Archcegosaurus and 

 Anthracosaurus, another type of Labyrinthodont reptile, moved, 

 with Baphetes, PJiolidog aster, and some thirty others of its kindred, 

 whilst Hylonomus, probably an insectivorous reptile, may have 

 ascended the trunks of the aged trees in search of Insects, of which 

 several have been discovered in the Coal. 



