882 



THE WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. Lect. VIII. 



rent ; and works of human art, with the bones of man and 

 the remains of contemporaneous animals and vegetables, were 

 found in the modern deposits. In the preceding era (the 

 Eocene tertiary) many existing species and genera, of plants 

 and animals, were absent. Large terrestrial pachydermata 

 greatly predominated, and the vegetation was principally 

 of a character referable to temperate and intertropical 

 climes ; while the seas abounded in fishes, crustaceans, and 

 mollusca, as at the present time. 



The next epoch (the Cretaceous) presented one wide 

 waste of waters, teeming with the general types of marine 

 beings, but of different species and genera to those of the 

 later eras, and bearing a large proportion of extinct 

 cephalopodous mollusca. Algse and fuci made up the 

 marine flora ; and drifted trunks of coniferas and dico- 

 tyledonous trees, and a few reptiles, were the only indica- 

 tions of the dry land and its inhabitants. The delta of a 

 vast river now appeared (the Wealden), containing the 

 spoils of an extensive island or continent ; and the remains 

 of colossal reptiles, and of extinct tropical plants, marked 

 the era of the country of the Iguanodon. 



We were then conducted to other seas (the Oolite and 

 Lias\ whose waters abounded in fishes and mollusca, and 

 were inhabited by marine reptiles, wholly unlike any 

 that now exist ; while the dry land was tenanted by en- 

 ormous terrestrial and flying reptiles, marsupial animals and 

 insects, and possessed a tropical flora of a peculiar cha- 

 racter. 



The succeeding era disclosed extensive regions, covered 

 by a luxuriant vegetation (the Carboniferous) ; with groves 

 and forests of palms, arborescent ferns, and coniferae, and 

 gigantic trees related to the existing club-mosses and equi- 

 setacese; the numerical preponderance of the flowerless 

 plants, constituting ft botanical character unknown, with 

 but one exception, in modern floras. The ocean abounded 



