will tell you that the three primary colours of light are sure to be developed at some time or another in the history of every plant or tree-in the blue and yellow which form the green of the leaves, and in the red of the fruit or russet of the bark. Just so with the fossil vegetation termed coal. The very aniline colours obtained from coal tar are the restoration of the primary colours which the ancient vegetation stored up from the light! Such is a portion of my history, briefly sketched; but the broad traces of design manifested in my preparation are too palpable to be overlooked. In my mass is stored up a force that saves the wear and tear of human muscle and sinew, that does away with the fearful toil which makes simple slaves of men, and enables them to gain daily bread by easier means. Through the vast ages during which I have been silently stowed away, plutonic disturbances have repeatedly broken through and cracked the solid strata as "faults," and have thus brought them to the surface to enable men to work the coal they contain. Had it not been for this series of subsequent disturbances and breakings, the huge coalrocks would soon have dipped away beyond human reach, and their valuable treasures have been lost to the world. It is those very agencies, therefore, which men in their ignorance have regarded as sure proofs of Divine anger, that have prevented such a misfortune, and have been among the greatest blessings that have occurred!

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