\ od 
18 L. Lesquereux on the Coal Formations of the United States. 
gigantic animals rebuilt from a scale or a bone 
another point of view, if it is true that the number of 
animal fossil remains is far greater than that of fossil plants, it 
cannot be denied that animal remains are mostly marine and are 
cast, accordingly, in a scarcely variable general mould. If we 
should judge of the successive developments of the vegetation of 
our globe by the fossil marine plants only, we should, indeed, 
come to a very erroneous conclusion; the Fucoides, for example, 
of all the formations are much alike, and preserve even up to 
our time their original typical characters. 
Marine animal remains appear to have been subjected to 
appreciable changes only by great geological events, of which 
pieces of bark or from leaves as they ean be for whole fishes, and 
As indicating the succession of the strata of our globe, or as 
geological marks, animal remains have this advantage: that as 
most of the strata have been formed by marine deposition, these 
remains are more generally found in every part of the geological 
measures. ‘They are thus an ever present if not always a reliable 
guide. But the most interesting part of the geological field is © 
entirely barren of those medals of the creation to which we look 
for a record not only of the successive deposition of strata but 
of all the changes which the surface of our earth has undergone. 
Marine strata have been formed from materials transported and 
mostly, at least, taken from dry land. Touching this “ft land, 
the multiplicity of changes to which it has been subjected by that 
potent and most variable agent, the atmosphere; concerning the 
various appearances of the successive stories built by the Eternal 
ower for the ultimate end of the structure, viz:—the habitation’ 
of man; about some of the materials prepared and heaped up 
one of these special branches of paleontology are more numerous, 
more universal, more easily found and better preserved and stud- 
