Fig. 49.-Ideal Landscape of the Triassic Period.

CHAPTER VII.

"Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Foot-prints on the sands of time."

LONGFELLOW.

N many respects I differ from my geological associates, although my story, like theirs, will help to fill up the great lapse of time demanded by the antiquity of the globe. My origin was perfectly natural, and not of that

semi-miraculous nature which some people have imagined. But truth is stranger than fiction, as my own case well exemplifies. I ought in justice to mention that, in the interval between the Coal period and that when I was formed, there was a sort of connecting epoch known as the Permian. Geologically speaking, it was not of very long duration. The "Magnesian Limestone" of Nottingham and Durham, &c., is included in it; and its chief and most interesting characters are the probable evidences it affords of a cold climate, when icebergs and glaciers existed, and formed what are known to geologists as the "Permian Breccias." With this exception, the general fauna of certainly the greater part of the era

Fig. 50.

greatly resembled that of Productus horridus, a characterthe Carboniferous period.

istic Permian fossil.

As a mineral I may lay claim to be almost as well known as my neighbours the pieces of coal and chalk. Geologically speaking, I am not limited to any particular formation or epoch, although I am about to speak of my experiences of that period which has been called "saliferous," or "salt-bearing," on account of the larger quantities of rock-salt to be obtained from it. But in almost the same mineral form I am found in other deposits, from the Silurian up to the Tertiary. In England, however, it is in

that formation known as the "New Red Sandstone," or "Trias," that I occur most considerably. In Cheshire my presence is indicated by natural brinesprings, by the disfigured surface of the earth near the salt-mines, and by the dark, thick clouds of smoke from the salt-works which stretch across the heavens.

But before I proceed to describe, as well as I am able, the agencies which were at work elaborating me into the natural condition in which I am now found, or to give you my faint recollections of the physical geography of the period, and the animals and plants which lived-let me borrow a few general remarks from books, as to the classification of those rocks to which I here belong. Their modern name of "Trias" is derived from the tripartite division into which they are separable. These go by the name of "Bunter," "Muschelkalk” (a German name for shelly limestone"), and the "Keuper" beds. The former prevail largely in Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, &c., and are noted for their deep red colour, as well as for their thick beds of hardened gravels, or conglomerates of liver-coloured quartz. These indicate rough action in the seas where they were deposited, and the much-worn, rounded pebbles tell an equally plain story of the wear-and-tear to which they have been subjected since they existed as angular fragments of Old Red Sandstone and other rocks.

But throughout the whole of this series, you look

almost in vain for any fossils. The coarse conditions under which the beds were formed were antagonistic to the preservation of any organic

remains.

Towards the conclusion of this period, in Germany there existed a tolerably deep sea. The waters were pure and free from mechanical sediment; and here the corals and encrinites found all the fitting circumstances for their luxuriant growth and procreation. The sea-bottom was alive with the latter; one particular form, whose elegance has given to it the name of the "Lily encrinite," being peculiar to this particular member of the rock series. The coral reefs increased in the shallower places, whilst amid all these swam great fishes, whose teeth proclaimed their marked reptilian affinites, or still huger marine reptiles. Some of the latter had their teeth especially formed for crushing the shellfish on which they fed, and which swarmed along the sea-bottom in countless thousands. Among the latter

Fig. 51.

you detect forms which belong to the Lily Encrinite Paleozoic as well as to the Mesozoic

epoch-forms which geologists not long

ago imagined were limited entirely and separately

to one or the other of these two great divisions of time.*

It is true the bed containing this admixture of Old World forms is slightly younger than those I am more particularly dwelling upon. But I could not forbear drawing the attention of my readers to this striking fact that the so-called "breaks" in the continuity of organic remains are fast disappearing before a more general geological investigation.

Fig. 52.

The

Ceratites nodosus, Muschelkalk; a characteristic fossil.

Hallstadt and St. Cassian beds, occupying the bases of the Austrian Alps, were formed along a seabottom during later Triassic times, where the fauna

*The Hallstadt and St. Cassian beds, which belong to the Upper Trias (Keuper beds), are remarkable for containing fossils, such as Goniatites and Orthoceratites, which are undoubtedly Paleozoic forms, associated with Ammonites and Belemnites, which are equally peculiar to the Secondary rocks.