Marine Beds. 
201 
make nothing of them ; she has raised them up into 
dry land, and laid the black veins bare, and still, for 
ages and ages, there was no living thing on the face 
of the earth that could see any sort of value in them ; 
and it was only the other day, so to speak, that she 
turned a new creature out of her workshop, who by 
degrees acquired sufficient wits to make a fire, and then 
to discover that the black rock would burn.” 
Fig. 53. — Lcpidodendron . 1 Portion of a fossil plant found in 
Devonian and Carboniferous Rocks. 
The sea played its part, too, in the building up of 
the Permo-Carboniferous system. If the stratified 
rocks associated with the coal were deposited for the 
most part in fresh water, that was not invariably the 
case. Now and again the .sea made inroads on the low 
country, and brought a rich fauna of sea shells, that 
remain to prove to us the reality of the change from 
fresh water to marine conditions. Turning; to Fig*. 44, 
O O' 
1 Quart. Jour. Gcol. Soc., Vol. xxvm., Hutc xxvi. 
