[footnote] *[See 'Wonders of Geology', vol. i., p. 230.] -- Tr.
Not a single species of a still extant family is to be found under the
chalk, while the remarkable family of the 'Sauroidi' (fishes with enameled
scales), almost allied to reptiles, and which are found from the coal beds
-- in which the larger species lie -- to the chalk, where they occur
individually, bear the same relation to the two families (the Lepidosteus
and Polypterus) which inhabit the American rivers and the Nile, as our
present elephants and tapirs do to the Mastodon and Anaplotheriun of the
primitive world."*
[footnote] *Agassiz, 'Poissons Fossiles', t. i., p. 30, and t. iii., p.
1-52; Buckland, 'Geology', vol. i., p. 273-277.
The beds of chalk which contain two of these sauroid fishes and gigantic
reptiles, and a whole extinct world of corals and muscles, have been proved
by Ehrenberg's beautiful discoveries to consist of microscopic Polythalamia,
many of which still exist in our seas, and in the middle latitudes of the
North Sea and Baltic. The first group of tertiary formations above the
chalk, which has been designated as belonging to the 'Eocene Period', does
not, therefore, merit that designation, since "the 'dawn of the world' in
which we live extends much further back in the history of the past than we
have hitherto supposed.
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