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The polypiaria were in such abundance as to form whole strata of themselves. The crinoidea and echinites were also extremely numerous. Shell mollusks, in hundreds of new species, occupied the bottoms of the seas of those ages, while of the swimming shell-fish, ammonites and belemnites, there were also many scores of varieties. The belemnite here calls for some particular notice.
The mountain limestone, indeed, deposited at the commencement of it, abounds unusually in polypiaria and crinoidea; but when we ascend to the coal-beds themselves, the case is altered, and these marine remains altogether disappear.
It contains many genera of crinoidea and polypiaria, and it is thought that some beds of it are wholly the production of the latter creatures, or are, in other words, coral reefs transformed by heat and pressure into rocks. Remains of fishes, of a very minute size, have been detected by Mr.
Species, in the same low class of animals, are now much more limited; for instance, the Red Sea gives different polypiaria, zoophytes, and shell-fish, from the Mediterranean.
In this era, the forms of life which existed in the Silurian are continued: we have the same orders of marine creatures, zoophyta, polypiaria, conchifera, crustacea; but to these are added numerous fishes, some of which are of most extraordinary and surprising forms.
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