THE GEOLOGICAL MIDDLE AGE. 
167 
on the old sea-beaches, the Corals in the neigh- 
borhood of coral reefs, and so on. In short, the 
distribution of animals then as now was in ac- 
cordance with their nature and habits, and we 
shall seek vainly for them in the localities where 
they did not belong. 
But when I say that the character of the Juras- 
sic animals is the same, I mean, that, wherever a 
Jurassic sea-shore occurs, be it in France, Ger- 
many, England, or elsewhere throughout the 
world, the Shells, Crustacea, or other animals 
found upon it have a special character, and are 
not to be confounded by any one thoroughly ac- 
quainted with these fossils with the Shells or 
Crustacea of any preceding or subsequent time, 
— that, where a Jurassic marsh exists, the land 
Reptiles inhabiting it are Jurassic, and neither 
Triassic nor Cretaceous, — that a Jurassic coral 
reef is built of Corals belonging as distinctly to 
the Jurassic creation as the Corals on the Florida 
reefs belong to the present creation, — that, where 
some Jurassic bay or inlet is disclosed to us with 
the Fishes anciently inhabiting it, they are as 
characteristic of their time as are the Fishes of 
Massachusetts Bay now. 
And not only so, but, while this unity of crea- 
tion prevails throughout the entire epoch as a 
whole, there is the same variety of geographical 
distribution, the same circumscription of faunae 
