Henry Woodward — Old Land-surfaces, 495 



land- vegetation rich in Ferns, Cycads, and Conifers. Lower still, in 

 the Oolitic series, we come to the Plant-beds of Yorkshire, and the 

 Coal-beds of Brora, in Sutherlandshire (also of Oolitic age), rich in 

 Equisetaceee, Ferns, Cycade^, and Coniferse ; and, again, in the 

 Lower Lias of Lyme Eegis and elsewhere we have Araucarian trunks 

 and foliage, and another Iguanodon-like Dinosaur (Scelidosaurus 

 ffarrisoni, Owen), and the remarkable long-tailed Pterodactyle, the 

 Dimorphodon macronyx ; with Insects' wings and other remains to 

 further attest the continuity of land-conditions. 



Descending still, we come to the Ehsetic Bone-bed, with its 

 Microlestes (IIypsiprymnopsis,Ji. Dawkins) Bhceticus, M.Moorei, andJlf. 

 antiquus, species of Marsupials, founded upon the evidence of minute 

 detached teeth, discovered in a Bone-bed in Somersetshire and at 

 Diegerloch, Stuttgart ; another form, named DromatJierium Sylvestre 

 by Emmons, occurs in the Chatham Coal-fields. We have also in 

 Triassic rocks Plant-remains, and in Richmond, Virginia, Coal of pure 

 and fine quality, in some places thirty to forty feet in thickness, 

 yielding Coniferee, Cycade^, Calamites, Equisetites, and Ferns. Thin 

 -shaly beds divide the Coal, composed almost entirely of the shells of 

 ■Mstlieria. 



In the Trias of Stuttgart, Eeptilia are also met with in considerable 

 numbers. 



Perhaps one of the most interesting features of this formation is 

 the occurrence of the most extensive beds (not only in this country 

 but in Germany and America) of unfossiliferous sandstone, the sur- 

 faces of which are ripple-marked, sun-cracked, and impressed with 

 innumerable foot-prints — many of these tridactyle impressions appear 

 to be arranged in bipedal series, like bird-tracks, and others to be 

 those of five-toed, four-footed, flat-footed Labyrinthodont reptilia. 

 The vast accumulations of salt in certain of these beds probably 

 indicate salt waters in the act of being evaporated down to dryness 

 by isolation from the parent ocean in inland seas and lakes.^ 



Here the Secondary rocks end, and we pass on to the Permian or 

 Magnesian Limestone. Again we find land amidst the ocean ; for 

 in the Permian of Saxony and Russia as many as sixty species of 

 fossil plants have been obtained, including many Tree-ferns, a great 

 Calamite, a Conifer, and a Lepidodendron. 



Still receding further on the Paleeozoic seas, we reach the low- 

 lying shores of the Carboniferous epoch, and once again we find in 

 the " Coal-measures" abundant evidence of land-conditions. 



Looked at as a whole, the Carboniferous series embraces not only 

 the Coal-measures proper, but also the Millstone Grit and the Moun- 

 tain-limestone. Sxifficient care seems never to have been taken to 

 dis-associate (palceontologically) this last great formation from the 

 preceding two. 



The "Mountain" or "Carboniferous Limestone," is a truly marine 

 formation, devoid of coal-seams (imless we except the Scottish series), 

 and rich in the remains of Corals, Crinoids, Brachiopoda, Conchifera, 

 Gasteropoda, Cephalopoda, and Pteropoda. 



^ See Prof. Rainsay, F.R.S., " On the Red Eocks of England," etc.. Quart. Joum. 

 Geol. Soc, 1871, vol. xivii., p. 189, and p. 241. 



