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The ferns no longer make up all the forests, but trees more like the pines began to abound, and insects became more plentiful and more varied. Hitherto the only land back-boned animal was akin to our salamanders. Now we have true lizards in abundance, many of them of large size.
These beds of coal grew in the air, and, although the swamps where they were formed had very little animal life in them, we find some fossils which tell us that the life of the land was making great progress; there are new insects, including beetles, cockroaches, spiders, and scorpions, and, what is far more important, there are some air-breathing, back-boned animals, akin to the salamanders and water-dogs of the present day.
First, then, he examined the varieties of MAMMALIA. The mammalia, of which man himself is the highest type, are the leading class of the great order of vertebrate, or back-boned animals, and fishes are the lowest, the intermediate classes being birds and reptiles.
We come at once into lands and seas where the back-boned animals are the ruling beings.
A couple of squadrons of Lancers had off-saddled by the roadside, a phalanx of horses topped with furled red and white pennons. Behind them stood a battery of artillery. Half a battalion of green-kilted Gordons sunned their bare knees a little lower down; a company or two of Manchesters back-boned the flabby convoy. The staff officer could not make out what in the world it meant.
Now, however, it is considered probable that the soft back-boned Labyrinthodont Archegosaurus, was an immature or larval form, while Labyrinthodonts with completely developed vertebræ have been found to exist amongst the very earliest forms yet discovered.
Sentiment; for I believe the poor devil was really fond of me. A valet. With me for ten years. He was really my comrade; always my right-hand on my exploration trips; back-boned, fearless, reliable in a pinch, and a scholar in a way; though I can't imagine how and where he picked up his learning. He saved my life at least twice by his quick wit.
And here the visitor may well pause to think upon the zoological travels he has already made, from the mammalia, which present the highest types of animal life; through the sub-families of birds, which form Cuvier's secondary class of vertebrata, or animals with a back-bone; to the threshold of the room in which the tertiary class of back-boned animals are deposited.
Even among these back-boned animals we find that the lower groups the fishes, the amphibians, and the reptiles promise little in the way of gains as compared with the higher groups, the birds and mammals; yet even among these inferior creatures we find certain forms which give promise of improvement under the care of man.
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