JR. S. Lull — Life of the Connecticut Trias. 417 



any on earth to-day. On the other hand, evidence seems to 

 point to continental deposits, the result of the ordinary sub- 

 aerial agencies of winds and rains and rivers, such as require 

 no ingenious straining of nature's laws to account for the 

 accumulation of vast deposits in the course of time. The 

 origin of the sediments was the wasting of the older rocks 

 which formed the limiting highlands on either side of the depres- 

 sion : and the organic remains, all of fresh-water or terrestrial 

 origin, testify to the presence, from time to time at least, of 

 standing bodies of water of considerable extent ; of seasonally, 

 if not continually, flowing rivers ; and of extensive land areas 

 with slowly drying pools left after the infrequent, but tor- 

 rential showers characteristic of arid to semi-arid regions of the 

 present day. That there were climatic cycles, such as Hunt- 

 ington (1907, 1911) has observed in the Near East, I have no 

 doubt, and I have reason to believe from the evidence of the 

 fossil vertebrates that the climate during the earlier part of 

 the Newark period may have been less arid than toward its 

 close. 



The vegetation bore the mark of antiquity in its monoto- 

 nous sombre greens, for brilliantly colored flowering plants had 

 not yet appeared, and apparently there was that sparseness and 

 lack of profusion, except locally, which characterizes our great 

 Southwest. The plants were of three main sorts : ferns, 

 cycads, and conifers, looked upon by existing animate life as 

 undesirable food, but which for utter want of a better must 

 have tempted some of the denizens of Triassic time, for we 

 have evidence of mild-mannered herbivores among the rapa- 

 cious devourers of flesh. 



Of the organic remains, those of vegetable origin consist of 

 the impressions and casts of the trunks of trees, some of the 

 latter found at Portland being of such size as to indicate a 

 stream of no mean transporting power ; and of the impressions 

 of leaves, twigs, and fruits, occasionally containing a delicate 

 film of carbon which preserves the most intricate detail with 

 wonderful fidelity. Here and there the vegetable remains 

 were of sufficient abundance to influence the production of 

 black bituminous shale bands of 60 to 100 feet in thickness, 

 formed during periods of the accumulation of waters which 

 supported a teeming population of fishes ; but never within 

 this area were conditions ripe for the formation of beds of coal 

 such as are found in the Newark strata from Virginia south- 

 ward. 



Animate life left its record rarely in the form of shells or 

 bones, but in marvellous abundance in trails and footprints, 

 some of such clarity of meaning that he who runs may read, 

 others of more difficult and questionable interpretation, yet 

 others exasperating in their baffling obscurity. 



