scenes of the birth of our globe, of which our imagination will never yield us more than an imperfect image.

Origin of the First Seas.

At the same time that, in the course of ages, the crust of the earth increased in thickness, the cooling down, by contracting the globe, forced its envelope to yield and break. These convulsions produced the mountains which now diversify its surface. Whilst the crust of the earth was yet thin, a slight effort of the central heat sufficed to rupture it, but this only produced insignificant elevations. When this crust had acquired greater thickness, its rupture, inasmuch as it required much greater force, was only effected by means of the most violent movements; it was then that the Cordilleras rose into the clouds. The upheaval of each mountain chain was necessarily accompanied by violent commotions in the depths of the sea, and thence came those grand scenes of deluges mentioned in the traditions of all nations. These great upliftings, of which fifteen have been proven by geological science, terminated by the rising of the chain of the Andes, the result of an immense rent extending almost from pole to pole. Then the two Americas were lifted above the ocean, and assumed their present shape. Thus fire and water successively remodelled the surface of the globe. It is to be remarked that the crust of the earth in breaking follows a fixed direction. All the great mountain chains have been developed from the north to the south, as the Andes and Ural, or from west to east, as in the Atlas chain.

Amazing Destruction of Animal Life.

It is evident that each period had its peculiar organic forms, and that the species of animals of one epoch neither lived before nor after this epoch. Humboldt himself, the most illustrious philosopher of modern times, embraces this opinion without any qualification. Each upheaval, he says, of these mountain chains of which we can determine the relative antiquity, has been signalized by the destruction of ancient species and the appearance of new forms of life. Numerous groups of animals and plants have had their beginning and their end, and creative intervention must have manifested itself at the appearance of each of them. The earth is only an immense cemetery where each generation acquires life at the expense of that which has just expired; the particles of our corpses form new materials for the beings which follow us.

The first layers of the earth that cooled down became covered with a luxuriant vegetation, the remains of which now constitute our coalbeds-antediluvian forests, which the genius of man extracts from the depths of the earth, to serve the wants of industry and his own dwellings.

During this period the whole surface of the globe was covered with strange and dense forests, where proudly reigned a host of plants and trees, the representatives of which at the present day play but a very humble part. Here were palms and bamboos, there gigantic moss-like plants, which bore straight stems towering to a height of eighty to a hundred feet. Then came immense growths, the stems of which remind one of a reptile's scaly armor. Lastly came trees of the family of our pines and firs, their boughs laden with fruit.

Gigantic Growths of Vegetation.

These vast primeval forests, which the course of ages was to annihilate, sprang up on a heated and marshy soil, which surrounded the lofty trees with thick compact masses of aquatic plants, intended to act a great part in the formation of coal. The luxuriant vegetation of the coal period was certainly favored by the enormous heat which the scarcely-chilled terrestrial crust still preserved, as also by the dampness of the atmosphere, and very probably by the great abundance of carbonic acid which it then contained. Although a thick and magnificent mantle of foliage covered the globe, everything wore a strange, gloomy aspect. Everywhere rose gigantic rushes and ferns, drawing up an exuberance of life from the fertile and virgin soil. The latter in their aspect resembled palms, and the least breath of wind waved their crowns of finely-cut leaves like flexible plumes of feathers. A sky, ever sombre and veiled, oppressed with heavy clouds the domes of these forests: a wan and dubious light scarcely made visible the dark and naked trunks, shedding on all sides a shadowy and indescribable hue of horror. This rich covering of vegetation, which extended from pole to pole, was sad and utterly silent, as well as strangely monotonous. Not a single flower enlivened the foliage, not one edible fruit loaded its branches. The echoes remained absolutely mute, and the branches without a sign of life, for no air-breathing animal had as yet appeared amid these dismal scenes of the ancient world!

One might say, in fact, that there was then no animal life to be seen, for amid so many remains of the coral flora, which geologists have so admirably reconstructed, they have only met with a few rare vestiges of one small reptile. This great contrast between the richness of the vegetable and penury of the animal kingdom is explained by the great quantity of carbonic acid at that time mixed with the atmosphere, which, though particularly favorable to the life of plants, must have been fatal to all animals endowed with active respiration. But though the atmosphere was poisonous, the seas, on the contrary, uniting to

THE PRIMEVAL FOREST FROM WHICH OUR COAL-BEDS WERE FORMED.

gether all conditions most favorable to life, were peopled with shelled molluscs and fish. After having lent life to the primitive ages of the globe, these strange forests completely disappeared in the lapse of ages, and they have now become almost impossible to recognize, owing to the transformations they have undergone in nature's immense subterranean store-houses. There can, however, be no doubt about the matter. It is clearly the remains of these antique forests of our planet that constitute the coal of the present time. Science, carrying its torch ever into the dark regions whence these remains proceeded, has discovered all the constituent parts. Amid the black and gleaming masses of the coal strata abundant impressions have been found of the plants which produced our vast beds of coal.

Discovery of an Antediluvian Monster.

In the year 1814, Sir Everard Home published an account of some large and very remarkable bones found in a rock, thirty or forty feet above the sea level, on the English coast. The remains examined were incomplete, and the nature and habits of the animal to which they belonged baffled all inquiry, until the discovery of more perfect skeletons unfolded a race of water reptiles, which received the name of ichthyosauaurus, or fish-lizard. This strange creature ranging from twenty to more than thirty feet in length, of which ten species are enumerated, had the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, teeth of a crocodile, the vertebræ of a fish, and the paddles of a whale; thus presenting in itself a combination of mechanical contrivances which are now found distributed among three distinct classes of the animal kingdom. Persons to whom this subject may now be presented for the first time, will receive with much surprise, perhaps almost with incredulity, such statements as are here advanced. It must be admitted that they at first seem much more like the dreams of fiction and romance than the sober results of calm and deliberate investigation; but to those who will examine the evidence of facts upon which our conclusions rest, there can remain no more reasonable doubt of the former existence of these strange and curious creatures, in the times and places we assign to them, than is felt by the antiquarian, who, finding the catacombs of Egypt stored with the mummies of men, and apes, and crocodiles, concludes them to be the remains of animals and reptiles, that have formed part of an ancient population on the banks of the Nile. The teeth of the lizard-fish, in some instances amounting to two hundred and ten, and the length of the jaws to more than six feet, qualified it for preying upon weaker creations; and the half-digested remains of fishes and reptiles, found within the skeletons, indicate the precise nature of its food..

A single paddle of the four with which the animal was furnished sometimes contains more than a hundred bones, giving it great elasticity and power, and enabling it to proceed at a rapid rate through the water. The eye was enormously large, its cavity, in one species, being fourteen inches in its longest direction. The eye also had a peculiar construction, to make it operate both like a telescope and a microscope, so that the animal could descry its prey by night as well as day, and at great depths in the water. This fish-like lizard in some degree answers to the words of Milton⚫

REMARKABLE SKELETON OF AN IMMENSE FISH-LIZZARD.

With head uplift above the waves, and eyes
That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides,
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood.

The lizard-fish was an air-breathing, cold-blooded, and carnivorous inhabitant of the ocean, probably haunting principally its creeks and bays, fitted by its formidable jaws and teeth, its rapid motion and power of vision, to be the scourge and tyrant of the existing seas of its era, keeping the multiplication of the species of other animals within proper limits