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The animal remains are chiefly confined to the slate beds, those named from Bala, in Wales, being the most prolific. Zoophyta, polyparia, crinoidea, conchifera, and crustacea, are the orders of the animal kingdom thus found in the earliest of earth's sepulchres.
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 Crinoidea, in the abundance of stalked forms in the ancient formations as compared with their present rarity, seem to present us with a fair case of modification from a more embryonic towards a less embryonic condition.
The upper surface of the calcareous stone below is completely incrusted over with a continuous pavement, formed by the stony roots or attachments of the Crinoidea; and besides this evidence of the length of time they had lived on the spot, we find great numbers of single joints, or circular plates of the stem and body of the encrinite, covered over with serpulae.
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.
Similarly of the Mollusca and Crinoidea, it appears that, while there are sundry genera found in America which are found here, there are scarcely any of the same species.
The rock appeared to consist in some parts of a buff calcareous sandstone, calcareous tuff; and, more abundantly, of limestone of a peculiar aspect, presenting at first sight the appearance of porphyry, but consisting of a base of compact limestone, with disseminated portions of calcareous spar, principally due to fragments of crinoidea.
Organic life PRESSES IN, as has been remarked, wherever there was room and encouragement for it, the forms being always such as suited the circumstances, and in a certain relation to them, as, for example, where the limestone-forming seas produced an abundance of corals, crinoidea, and shell-fish.
In some of these shales stems of crinoidea are found in an erect position, having evidently become fossil on the spots where they grew at the bottom of the sea. The facility with which these rocks, when exposed to the weather, are resolved into mud, proves that, notwithstanding their antiquity, they are nearly in the state in which they were first thrown down. b. Pentamerus Knightii, Sowerby.
Vegetation of the Coal Period. Ferns, Lycopodiaceae, Equisetaceae, Sigillariae, Stigmariae, Coniferae. Angiosperms. Climate of the Coal Period. Mountain Limestone. Marine Fauna of the Carboniferous Period. Corals. Bryozoa, Crinoidea. Mollusca. Great Number of fossil Fish. Foraminifera.
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