Part 22

“Different members of the group rest in England, in some region or other,” says Lyell, “on almost every principal member of the Palæozoic series, on Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian rocks; and there is evidence everywhere of disturbance, contortion, partial upheaval into land, and vast denudations which the older rocks underwent before and during the deposition of the successive strata of the New Red Sandstone group.” (“Elements of Geology,” p. 439.)

The Muschelkalk consists of beds of compact limestone, often greyish, sometimes black, alternating with marl and clay, and commonly containing such numbers of shells that the name of shelly limestone (Muschelkalk) has been given to the formation by the Germans. The beds are sometimes magnesian, especially in the lower strata, which contain deposits of gypsum and rock-salt.

The seas of this sub-period, which is named after the innumerable masses of shells inclosed in the rocks which it represents, included, besides great numbers of Mollusca, Saurian Reptiles of twelve different genera, some Turtles, and six new genera of Fishes clothed with a cuirass. Let us pause at the Mollusca which peopled the Triassic seas.

Among the shells characteristic of the Muschelkalk period, we mention Natica Gaillardoti, Rostellaria antiqua, Lima striata, Avicula socialis, Terebratula vulgaris, Turbonilla dubia, Myophoria vulgaris, Nautilus hexagonalis, and Ceratites nodosus. The Ceratites, of which a species is here represented (Fig. 81), form a genus closely allied to the Ammonites, which seem to have played such an important part in the ancient seas, but which have no existence in those of our era, either in species or even in genus. This Ceratite is found in the Muschelkalk of Germany, a formation which has no equivalent in England, but which is a compact greyish limestone underlying the saliferous rocks in Germany, and including beds of dolomite with gypsum and rock-salt.

The Mytilus or Mussel, which properly belonged to this age, are acephalous (or headless) Molluscs with elongated triangular shells, of which there are many species found in our existing seas. Lima, Myophoria, Posidonia, and Avicula, are acephalous Molluscs of the same period. The two genera Natica and Rostellaria belong to the Gasteropoda, and are abundant in the Muschelkalk in France, Germany, and Poland.

Among the Echinoderms belonging to this period may be mentioned Encrinus moniliformis and E. liliiformis, or lily encrinite (Fig. 82), whose remains, constituting in some localities whole beds of rock, show the slow progress with which this zoophyte formed beds of limestone in the clear seas of the period. To these may be added, among the Mollusca, Avicula subcostata and Myophoria vulgaris.

In the Muschelkalk are found the skull and teeth of Placodus gigas, a reptile which was originally placed by Agassiz among the class of Fishes; but more perfect specimens have satisfied Professor Owen that it was a Saurian Reptile.

It may be added, that the presence of a few genera, peculiar to the Primary epoch, which entirely disappeared during the sub-period, and the appearance for the first time of some other animals peculiar to the Jurassic period, give to the Muschelkalk fauna the appearance of being one of passage from one period to the other.

The seas, then, contained a few Reptiles, probably inhabitants of the banks of rivers, as Phytosaurus, Capitosaurus, &c., and sundry Fishes, as Sphœrodus and Pycnodus. In this sub-period we shall say nothing of the Land-Turtles, which for the first time now appear; but, we should note, that at the Bunter period a gigantic Reptile appears, on which the opinions of geologists were for a long while at variance. In the argillaceous rocks of the Muschelkalk period imprints of the foot of some animal were discovered in the sandstones of Storeton Hill, in Cheshire, and in the New Red Sandstone of parts of Warwickshire, as well as in Thuringia, and Hesseburg in Saxony, which very much resembled the impression that might be made in soft clay by the outstretched fingers and thumb of a human hand. These traces were made by a species of Reptile furnished with four feet, the two fore-feet being much broader than the hinder two. The head, pelvis, and scapula only of this strange-looking animal have been found, but these are considered to have belonged to a gigantic air-breathing reptile closely connected with the Batrachians. It is thought that the head was not naked, but protected by a bony cushion; that its jaws were armed with conical teeth, of great strength and of a complicated structure. This curious and uncouth-looking creature, of which the woodcut Fig. 83 is a restoration, has been named the Cheirotherium, or Labyrinthodon, from the complicated arrangement of the cementing layer of the teeth. (See also Fig. 1, p. 12.)

Another Reptile of great dimensions--which would seem to have been intended to prepare the way for the appearance of the enormous Saurians which present themselves in the Jurassic period--was the Nothosaurus, a species of marine Crocodile, of which a restoration has been attempted in PLATE XIII. opposite.

It has been supposed, from certain impressions which appear in the Keuper sandstones of the Connecticut river in North America, that Birds made their appearance in the period which now occupies us; the flags on which these occur by thousands show the tracks of an animal of great size (some 20 inches long and 4½ feet apart), presenting the impression of three toes, like some of the Struthionidæ or Ostriches, accompanied by raindrops. No remains of the skeletons of birds have been met with in rocks of this period, and the footprints in question are all that can be alleged in support of the hypothesis.

M. Ad. Brongniart places the commencement of dicotyledonous gymnosperm plants in this age. The characteristics of this Flora consist in numerous Ferns, constituting genera now extinct, such as Anomopteris and Crematopteris. The true Equiseta are rare in it. The Calamites, or, rather, the Calamodendra, abound. The gymnosperms are represented by the genera Conifer, Voltzia, and Haidingera, of which both species and individuals are very numerous in the formation of this period.

Among the species of plants which characterise this formation, we may mention Neuropteris elegans, Calamites arenaceus, Voltzia heterophylla, Haidingera speciosa. The Haidingera, belonging to the tribe of Abietinæ, were plants with large leaves, analogous to those of our Damara, growing close together, and nearly imbricated, as in the Araucaria. Their fruit, which are cones with rounded scales, are imbricated, and have only a single seed, thus bearing out the strong resemblance which has been traced between these fossil plants, and the Damara.

The Voltzias (Fig. 84), which seem to have formed the greater part of the forests were a genus of Cupressinaceæ, now extinct, which are well characterised among the fossil Conifers of the period. The alternate spiral leaves, forming five to eight rows sessile, that is, sitting close to the branch and drooping, have much in them analogous to the Cryptomerias. Their fruit was an oblong cone with scales, loosely imbricated, cuneiform or wedge-shaped, and, commonly, composed of from three to five obtuse lobes. In Fig. 84 we have a part of the stem, a branch with leaves and cone. In his “Botanic Geography,” M. Lecoq thus describes the vegetation of the ancient world in the first period of the Triassic age: “While the variegated sandstone and mottled clays were being slowly deposited in regular beds by the waters, magnificent Ferns still exhibited their light and elegantly-carved leaves. Divers Protopteris and majestic Neuropteris associated themselves in extensive forests, where vegetated also the Crematopteris typica of Schimper, the Anomopteris Mongeotii of Brongniart, and the pretty Trichomanites myriophyllum (Göppert). The Conifers of this epoch attain a very considerable development, and would form graceful forests of green trees. Elegant monocotyledons, representing the forms of tropical countries, seem to show themselves for the first time, the Yuccites Vogesiacus of Schimper constituted groups at once thickly serried and of great extent.

“A family, hitherto doubtful, appears under the elegant form of Nilssonia Hogardi, Schimp.; Ctenis Hogardi, Brongn. It is still seen in the Zamites Vogesiacus, Schimp.; and the group of the Cycads sharing at once in the organisation of the Conifers and the elegance of the Palms, now decorate the earth, which reveals in these new forms its vast fecundity. (See Fig. 72, p. 168.)

“Of the herbaceous plants which formed the undergrowth of the forests, or which luxuriated in its cool marshes, the most remarkable is the Ætheophyllum speciosum, Schimp. Their organisation approximates to the Lycopodiaceæ and Thyphaceæ, the Ætheophyllum stipulare, Brongn., and the curious Schizoneura paradoxa, Schimp. Thus we can trace the commencement of the reign of the Dicotyledons with naked seeds, which afterwards become so widely disseminated, in a few Angiosperms, composed principally of two families, the Conifers and Cycadeaceæ, still represented in the existing vegetation. The former, very abundant at first, associated themselves with the cellular Cryptogams, which still abound, although they are decreasing, then with the Cycadeaceæ, which present themselves slowly, but will soon be observed to take a large part in the brilliant harmonies of the vegetable kingdom.”

The engraving at page 191 (PLATE XIII.) gives an idealised picture of the plants and animals of the period. The reader must imagine himself transported to the shores of the Muschelkalk sea at a moment when its waves are agitated by a violent but passing storm. The reflux of the tide exposes some of the aquatic animals of the period. Some fine Encrinites are seen, with their long flexible stems, and a few Mytili and Terebratulæ. The Reptile which occupies the rocks, and prepares to throw itself on its prey, is the Nothosaurus. Not far from it are other reptiles, its congeners, but of a smaller species. Upon the dune on the shore is a fine group of the trees of the period, that is, of Haidingeras, with large trunks, with drooping branches and foliage, of which the cedars of our own age give some idea. The elegant Voltzias are seen in the second plane of this curtain of verdure. The Reptiles which lived in these primitive forests, and which would give to it so strange a character, are represented by the Labyrinthodon, which descends towards the sea on the right, leaving upon the sandy shore those curious tracks which have been so wonderfully preserved to our days.

The footprints of the reptilian animals of this period prove that they walked over moist surfaces; and, if these surfaces had been simply left by a retiring tide, they would generally have been obliterated by the returning flood, in the same manner that is seen every day on our own sandy shores. It seems more likely that the surfaces, on which fossil footprints are now found, were left bare by the summer evaporation of a lake; that these surfaces were afterwards dried by the sun, and the footprints hardened, so as to ensure their preservation, before the rising waters brought by flooded muddy rivers again submerged the low flat shores and deposited new layers of salt, just as they do at the present day round the Dead Sea and the Salt Lake of Utah.

KEUPER SUB-PERIOD.

The formation which characterises the Keuper, or saliferous period, is of moderate extent, and derives the latter name from the salt deposits it contains.

These rocks consist of a vast number of argillaceous and marly beds, variously coloured, but chiefly red, with tints of yellow and green. These are the colours which gave the name of variegatea (Poikilitic) to the series. The beds of red marl often alternate with sandstones, which are also variegated in colour. As subordinate rocks, we find in this formation some deposits of a poor pyritic coal and of gypsum. But what especially characterises the formation are the important deposits of rock-salt which are included in it. The saliferous beds, often twenty-five to forty feet thick, alternate with beds of clay, the whole attaining a thickness of 160 yards. In Germany in Würtemberg, in France at Vic, at Dieuze, and at Château-Salins, the rock-salt of the saliferous formation has become an important branch of industry. In the Jura, salt is extracted from the water charged with chlorides, which issues from this formation.

Some of these deposits are situated at great depths, and cannot be reached without very considerable labour. The salt-mines of Wieliczka, in Poland, for example, can be procured on the surface, or by galleries of little depth, because the deposit belongs to the Tertiary period; but the deposits of salt, in the Triassic age, lie so much deeper, as to be only approachable by a regular process of mining by galleries, and the ordinary mode of reaching the salt is by digging pits, which are afterwards filled with water. This water, charged with the salt, is then pumped up into troughs, where it is evaporated, and the crystallised mineral obtained.

What is the origin of the great deposits of marine salt which occur in this formation, and which always alternate with thin beds of clay or marl? We can only attribute them to the evaporation of vast quantities of sea-water introduced into depressions, cavities, or gulfs, which the sandy dunes afterwards separated from the great open sea. In PLATE XIV. an attempt is made to represent the natural fact, which must have been of frequent recurrence during the saliferous period, to form the considerable masses of rock-salt which are now found in the rocks of the period. On the right is the sea, with a dune of considerable extent, separating it from a tranquil basin of smooth water. At intervals, and from various causes, the sea, clearing the dune, enters and fills the basin. We may even suppose that a gulf exists here which, at one time, communicated with the sea; the winds having raised this sandy dune, the gulf becomes transformed, by degrees, into a basin or back-water, closed on all sides. However that may be, it is pretty certain that if the waters of the sea were once shut up in this basin, with an argillaceous bottom and without any opening, evaporation from the effects of solar heat would take place, and a bed of salt would be the result of this evaporation, mixed with other mineral salts which accompany chloride of sodium in sea-water, such as sulphate of magnesia, chloride of potassium, &c. This bed of salt, left by the evaporation of the water, would soon receive an argillaceous covering from the clay and silt suspended in the muddy water of the basin, thus forming a first alternation of salt and of clay or marl. The sea making fresh breaches across the barriers, the same process took place with a similar result, until the basin was filled up. By the regular and tranquil repetition of this phenomenon, continued during a long succession of ages, this abundant deposit of rock-salt has been formed, which occupies so important a position in the Secondary rocks.

There is in the delta of the Indus a singular region, called the Runn of Cutch, which extends over an area of 7,000 square miles, which is neither land nor sea, but is under water during the monsoons, and in the dry season is incrusted, here and there, with salt about an inch thick, the result of evaporation. Dry land has been largely increased here, during the present century, by subsidence of the waters and upheavals by earthquakes. “That successive layers of salt may have been thrown down one upon the other on many thousand square miles, in such a region, is undeniable,” says Lyell. “The supply of brine from the ocean is as inexhaustible as the supply of heat from the sun. The only assumption required to enable us to explain the great thickness of salt in such an area, is the continuance for an indefinite period of a subsidence, the country preserving all the time a general approach to horizontally.” The observations of Mr. Darwin on the atolls of the Pacific, prove that such a continuous subsidence is probable. Hugh Miller, after ably discussing various spots of earth where, as in the Runn of Cutch, evaporation and deposit take place, adds: “If we suppose that, instead of a barrier of lava, sand-bars were raised by the surf on a flat arenaceous coast, during a slow and equable sinking of the surface, the waters of the outer gulf might occasionally topple over the bar and supply a fresh brine when the first stock had been exhausted by evaporation.”

Professor Ramsay has pointed out that both the sandstones and marls of the Triassic epoch were formed in lakes. In the latter part of this epoch, he is of opinion, that the Keuper marls of the British Isles were deposited in a large lake, or lakes, which were fresh or brackish at first, but afterwards salt and without outlets to the sea; and that the same was occasionally the case with regard to other portions of northern Europe and its adjoining seas.

By the silting up of such lakes with sediment, and the gradual evaporation of their waters under favourable conditions, such as increased heat and diminished rainfall--where the lakes might cease to have an outflow into the sea and the loss of water by evaporation would exceed the amount flowing into them--the salt or salts contained in solution would, by degrees, become concentrated and finally precipitated. In this way the great deposits of rock-salt and gypsum, common in the Keuper formation, may be accounted for.

Subsequently, by increase of rainfall or decrease of heat, and sinking of the district, the waters became comparatively less salt again; and a recurrence of such conditions lasted until the close of the Keuper period, when a partial influx of the sea took place, and the Rhætic beds of England were deposited.

The red colour of the New Red Sandstones and marls is caused by peroxide of iron, which may also have been carried into the lakes in solution, as a carbonate, and afterwards converted into peroxide by contact with air, and precipitated as a thin pellicle upon the sedimentary grains of sandy mud, of which the Triassic beds more or less consist. Professor Ramsay further considers that all the red-coloured strata of England, including the Permian, Old Red Sandstone, and even the Old Cambrian formation, were deposited in lakes or inland waters.