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.- ID* 



Ch. IX.] 



AT SUCCESSIVE GEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 



157 



waste of the incumbent formations. The general absence 

 therefore in Cambrian, Silurian and Devonian rocks of all 



emams 



of land animals is 



not to be wondered at, and 



taken alone affords no presumption against the existence, in 

 paleozoic times, of air-breathers of the most highly organised 



Up to the year 1865, only a few insects had been obtained 



from 



are well known to us, and none from the Devonian. From 

 this last formation several have now been brought to light 



Neur 



Why 



Mr. Hartt, in rocks near St. John's, New Brui 

 determined by Mr. Scudder, of Boston, U.S. 

 should we despair of finding in our future researches, some 

 air-breathers of a much higher order than insects which 

 may have peopled the forests of the Devonian era, m which 

 pines, Sigillariee and Lepidodendra, or gigantic Lycopodiacete 



flourished. 



pulmoniferous m 



called Pupa Vetusta, of which hundreds of individuals have 

 now been detected, was not discovered in the coal measures 

 until the year 1852, in Nova Scotia. 



Birds.— In. regard to birds, they are usually wanting, for 

 reasons to be explained in the next volume, in deposits of all 

 ages, even in the tertiary periods, where we know that birds 

 as well as land quadrupeds abounded. Some of the fossil 

 remains formerly referred to this class in the Wealden (a 

 great freshwater deposit below the chalk) , have since been 



" " But in the lithographic 



shown 



stone of Solenhofen, a division of the Upper Oolite, a skeleton 



... n • i rv _ il. 



almost 



was found in 1862, and determined by Professor Owen to 



from all living birds in 



belong to the class Aves. 

 the structure of its fore limbs and still more of its tail, in 

 which last there were no less than twenty vertebra, each of 

 them supporting a pair of plumes. Although no skeletons 

 of the feathered tribe have been found in rocks older than the 

 Oolite, yet the footmarks of a great variety of species, of va- 

 rious sizes, some larger than the ostrich, others smaller than 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. No. 6, p. 96. 



