THE SCOUTS OF THE REPTILE HORDE. 171 



the arrival of a far-off race. The air was fit for the respi- 

 ration of a low order of terrestrial animals, and, in obedi- 

 ence to the mandates of creative energy, they began to 

 come forth. There was an interval of time in the history 

 of the world when the scales of empire hung balanced be- 

 tween the fishes and the reptiles. The first were on the 

 wane ; the latter were gathering strength from age to age. 

 Nature favored the latter. Omnipotence bade them march 

 on, and vanquish and sweep from the earth those lower 

 forms which had been permitted to hold the mastery in 

 creation only because the world was, as yet, unfit for be- 

 ings more exalted and worthy. These middle ages are 

 styled the Permian period. Vegetation was still abundant. 

 Though the acme of vegetable luxuriance had passed, and 

 no more vast deposits of coal were to be treasured up — at 

 least in those portions of the world preparing for the occu 

 pancy of the Caucasian race — the trunks and leaves of the 

 flora of that period, preserved in beds of sandstone and 

 shale, attest the productiveness of the Permian soil. In 

 these ages of the world the first emphatically lizard-like 

 reptiles came upon the stage — a family belonging to the 

 Saurians — though many of the Permian reptiles present a 

 divergence from true lizards in having their numerous 

 teeth implanted in sockets instead of soldered to the mar- 

 gins of the jaws. Occasionally, also, was to be seen the 

 frog-like form of a Labyrinthodont sunning himself upon 

 the marshy border of a Permian estuary (Fig. 09). 



Until within a few years geologists were unacquainted 

 with any Permian rocks upon the American continent. 

 Dr. Emmons, however, in 1856, established the existence 

 of Permian reptiles in a brown sandstone in North Caro- 

 lina, deposited in some of the furroAvs between the folds of 

 the Appalachian upheaval. A little later, Permian rock^ 

 were announced from Kansas almost simultaneously by 



