Fig. 669.—Impressions of feet of Cheirotherium.
At length the land remained undisturbed. It sank no more, and the trees waved luxuriously over the buried forests of past ages, and another cycle set in called the Permian, from the ancient kingdom of Permia, where all the features of that period are exhibited on a very grand scale, and which extended for several hundred miles between the Ural mountains and the Volga. In the Permian period we have the progression of animal life more distinctly developed than in the Carboniferous system, which immediately preceded it. It is true there are indications in the latter that curious animals, called the Cheirotherium and the Labyrinthodon, were alive then, and the remains of numerous insects, such as beetles and crickets, have been found; but the Permian developed them, and reptiles, saurians, and lizards have been traced; but as Sir R. Murchison states, throughout the whole extent the animals are of a single type. We have the hand-like impressions of the feet of the Cheirotherium, so called from the Greek “cheir,” a hand. The soil appears to have been very soft, and peculiarly adapted to receive impressions, and which having been in many places covered over with a stratum of fine sand, and then abandoned by the sea, the whole has hardened into stone, and being now separated, the one contains their footprints, and the other perfect casts of them! Nor are these footmarks all that these sandstones have to tell us of their day; for the ripples of the waves, and even the little pits made by drops of rain as they fell, are in this most marvellous manner preserved, forming objects of wonder and admiration.
The organic remains during this period are not very abundant, and many of the fauna of the previous systems appear to have died out, while others appeared to meet with fuller development in succeeding ages. The Permian is also known as the New Red Sandstone, or Magnesian Limestone group. “Dias” has also been suggested with reference to the “Trias” group, “the Upper New Red Sandstone,” which comes next. The Permian rocks are very varied, and contain minerals, such as copper and sulphur.
As the strata below the new sandstone formation was called the “Carboniferous” system, from its containing much carbon in the form both of coal and carbonic acid, so this has been called the “Saliferous” system, from the occurrence in many places of strata of “rock-salt,” or crystallised chloride of sodium, and (where the rain finds its way down and dissolves it) of brine springs; these (in England) exist chiefly in Cheshire and Warwickshire, but in Poland and Hungary they exist on a much larger scale, the rock-salt being nearly a thousand feet thick. It has been said that these strata of salt were formed by the evaporation of salt lakes, but it is much more probable that salt is one of the natural materials of the earth, and that both salt lakes and oceans have become salt from dissolving out these strata wherever they have come into contact.
It is supposed that during the Permian period the greater portion of the continent of Europe was raised above the ocean, and the deposits were formed in salt lakes, for the appearance of the organic remains tends to establish the fact that the creatures of that period were not far from dry land even in their watery existence, and the reptiles found confirm this view. We have now to examine the Mesozoic, or Secondary System.
Dinotherium giganteum.