PALEONTOLOGY 113 



by Principal Dawson and Professor Cope. So that 

 at the present time, the Labyrinthodont Fauna of 

 the Carboniferous rocks is more extensive and diver- 

 sified than that of the Trias, while its chief types, so 

 far as osteology enables us to judge, are quite as 

 highly organized. Thus it is certain that a compara- 

 tively highly-organized vertebrate type, such as that 

 of the Labyrinthodonts, is capable of persisting, with 

 no considerable change, through the period repre- 

 sented by the vast deposits which constitute the Car- 

 boniferous, the Permian and the Triassic formations. 



"The very remarkable results which have been 

 brought to light by the sounding and dredging opera- 

 tions, which have been carried on with such remark- 

 able success by the expeditions sent out by our own, 

 the American, and the Swedish Governments, under 

 the supervision of able naturalists, have a bearing in 

 the same direction. These investigations have demon- 

 strated the existence, at great depths in the ocean, of 

 living animals, in some cases identical with, in others 

 very similar to, those which are found fossilized in 

 the white chalk. 



"The Globigerina, Cyatholiths, Coccospheres, 

 Discoliths in the one are absolutely identical with 

 those in the other; there are identical or closely an- 

 alogous species of Sponges, Echinoderms and Brach- 

 iopods. Off the coast of Portugal there now lives a 

 species of Beryx, which, doubtless, leaves its bones 

 and scales here and there in the Atlantic ooze, as its 

 predecessor left its spoils in the mud of the sea of 

 the Cretaceous epoch. 



" Many years ago, I ventured to speak of the At- 

 lantic mud as ' modern chalk,' and I know of no fact 

 inconsistent with the view which Professor Wyville 

 Thompson has advocated, that the modern chalk is 

 not only the lineal descendant of the ancient chalk, 



