fringed with coral reefs; yet so brief is the space in the history of the crust of our earth, that "in the fields about Steeple Ashton every stone turned up by the plough is a coral, and the structure of coral banks may be studied in the lofty cliffs of Cheddar as well as in the upheaved islands of southern seas."* In the secondary period the corals get fewer, only fourteen species being found in the coral rag, but again at a later period (Eocene) there are twentyfive, and towards the close of the tertiary times only four true corals are found in the coral crag. THE FIFTH GREAT DAY.-Morning.t-Again a change comes o'er the spirit of our dream, and morning rises upon the hot blue skies, the sandy wastes, and parched foliage of a tropical land. Where of old the club-mosses mustered in dense and lofty jungles, where the tall ferns tossed their bright green arms. about as the warm breeze swept over the uplands, and the arid reeds harshly rustled and clattered when the night wind stirred them, forests of palms rear their straight and slender shafts and spread forth their feathery crowns beneath the hot english sun. In the clay of Sheppey Mr. Bowerbank found no less than thirteen species of this now almost tropical tree, among which were the date-palm, the cocoa-nut, and the areca. One puzzling specimen of fruit found at Swanage Bay, Isle of Purbeck, speaks as if there had been a very mixed order of fruits there, for it is rather like a hickory nut, or the fruit of the Australian plant known by the very intelligible name *Milne-Edwards. + The eocene. of petalo-stigma. Beneath the lofty palms grew creeping plants of the melon order, while over the fields spread cotton and pepper plants in such plenty that there must have been something like a group of spice islands at the mouth of the Thames and off the coast of Kent.* Cowries too and other tropical shells clung to the rocks, and fed in the pools of the Channel and Thames, on which also floated the beautiful english nautilus: "The sea-born sailor of the shell canoe." or The sepia fish crept stealthily by the stone darkened the pools to escape from its enemies. Rayfish,† whose jaws were armed with a perfect pavement of crushing teeth, watched and basked lazily in the depths, while through the blue waters shot formidable sharks, and swordfishes armed with longer and far more trenchant weapons than the present race. The eocene seagull sailed overhead or plunged and floated on the waters, the kingfisher chased the dragonfly by the stream, and by marsh and tarn watched the stiff, ungainly heron, while lost in the deep blue of the unclouded tropic sky, hung the keen-eyed vulture, ready to swoop down on some young snake or unwary opossum. Quite in the dawn of this epoch, the toiling bee-not, as now, the companion of man, whose haunts it rarely leaves for any distance-built its galleried fortalice in the * Possibly further. Leaves of a tree like the sweet cinnamon have been found in the brown coal of the Rhine. + Rayfish begin with the secondary period. hollows of the old trees or on the grassy banks, and sallied forth "To spoil the saffron flowers, and sip the blues It is often found, like the ant, buried in the amber :"locked up hermetically in its gem-like tomb; an embalmed corpse in a crystal coffin." Along with it came the moth, butterfly, and the bombyx, an insect which may be seen in summer poised on its restless wings, sipping deep of the juice of the flowers above which it hovers. "The winged nation wanders through the skies, In the south of England the river banks were the favourite abode of a singular race of pig-like animals. They were something of a cross between-or at any rate they stood between (if such terms can be used) the horse, tapir, rhinoceros, and hog, varying in size from the bulk of a hedgehog to that of a river-horse. They seem to have been peaceful animals of aquatic tastes; some had fleshy trunks like the tapirs, others thick, strong tails almost like the otter or kangaroo; in one species* this appendage was as long as the body and very thick. Remains of a very large herbeating animal of this time have been dredged up off the coast of Essex † and dug out of the plastic clay near Camberwell; also a small-hoofed herb-eater in The anoplotherium. "It was the only mammal that had all its teeth level, without a break, like man."-HUXLEY. The coryphodon.-Owen's Palæontology, p. 322. the London clay,* which seems to have been intermediate between the tapir and the pig or pachyderm. Indeed, many of these animals had features in common with two or three existing 'genera, and yet with so much diversity, that it is often difficult to describe them by their resemblance to animals now living. As this part of the day draws to a close, a hoofed quadruped appeared,† forming a link between some of these strange animals and the cud-chewing beasts of the field, along with a few of the aquatic pachyderms first spoken of, and by this time fast verging to extinction. Indeed they do not seem to have ever been very numerous in the south of England; their favourite haunt was the Paris basin, where they swarmed in herds for ages, and where their remains are often found in a very fine state of preservation. In those days, as in all others since life began on the globe, the weak and peaceful tribes were the prey of the powerful and destructive. The crocodile and alligator warred upon these herb-eating animals in the rivers and lakes, snakes struck and coiled round them in the jungle, and ferocious carnivorous beasts chased them on the plains. The strata in which they are found yield to the geologist ample proof that there existed at the same time flesh-eating beasts, of the most savage class to judge from their fleshcutting teeth. "They were," says Owen, "more fell and deadly in their destructive task than modern wolves or tigers." A species of one of these crea+ The dichodon. * The pliolophus. See Appendix 5. * tures, about the size of a leopard, has left its remains in the upper eocene of Hordwell, in Hampshire. Of the crocodile two varieties have been discovered in the London clay of Sheppey Island, and later on there was a ghavial-like crocodile at Bracklesham. There was also the Hastings crocodile, with short, broad jaws, found in the Hordle beds, and a true alligator. There were snakes in Sheppeyt twelve feet long; at Bracklesham there some of the boa-constrictor kind twenty feet were in length. The oldest bats belong to this era, making their appearance on the stage of life in Paris, possibly also in a few woodland glades in the most southern part of England, about the coast of Hampshire for instance or the Isles of Wight or Sheppey. Most likely they were rare, as great part of the English deposits of this date belong to the sea, while those of Paris were large fresh-water lakes, the banks of which might have been well wooded, and more affected by the bat. If primeval man lived in those times, he must have had delicate eating of one kind in abundance; for there are more species of turtle left in the London clay than are now known to exist in the whole world. Even the crocodile-eating turtle is represented at Hordwell in the upper eocene. Besides there were all the pork-like animals, if he liked them; or if his tastes leaned to those of the noble savage, there were the great tapir-like beast and all the crocodiles-not * The hyæonodon. The earliest remains of serpents in England belong to the London clay. |