exclusively marine; others amphibious: others were terrestrial, ranging in savannas and jungles, clothed with a tropical vegetation, or basking on the margins of estuaries, lakes, and rivers. Even the air was tenanted by flying lizards, under the dragon form of Pterodactyles. The earth was probably at that time too much covered with water, and those portions of land which had emerged above the surface, were too frequently agitated by earthquakes, inundations, and atmospheric irregularities, to be extensively occupied by any higher order of quadrupeds than reptiles.
As the history of these reptiles, and also that of the vegetable remains,[1] of the secondary formations, will be made a subject of distinct inquiry, it will here suffice to state, that the proofs of method and design in the adaptation of these extinct forms of organization to the varied circumstances and conditions of the earth's progressive stages of advancement, are similar to those we trace in the structure of living animal and vegetable bodies; in each case we argue that the existence of contrivances, adapted to produce definite and useful ends, implies the anterior existence and agency of creative intelligence.
- ↑ The vegetable remains of the secondary strata differ from those of the transition period, and are very rarely accumulated into beds of valuable coal. The imperfect coal of the Cleveland Moorlands near Whitby, on the, coast of Yorkshire, and that of Brora in the county of Sutherland, occurs in the lower region of the oolite formation; that of Bückeberg in Nassau, is in the lower region of the same formation, and is of superior quality.
