The huge reptiles
in the jungle of the Carboniferous era passed out of
existence. In place of them came the birds, the
mammals,--the varied types of animal life which we now
know. Last in the scale of time and highest in point of
evolution, there appeared man.
We must not speak of the continents as having been made
once and for all in their present form. No doubt in the
countless centuries of geological evolution various parts
of the earth were alternately raised and depressed. Great
forests grew, and by some convulsion were buried beneath
the ocean, covered deep as they lay there with a sediment
of earth and rock, and at length raised again as the
waters retreated. The coal-beds of Cape Breton are the
remains of a forest buried beneath the sea. Below the
soil of Alberta is a vast jungle of vegetation, a dense
mass of giant fern trees. The Great Lakes were once part
of a much vaster body of water, far greater in extent
than they now are. The ancient shore-line of Lake Superior
may be traced five hundred feet above its present level.
In that early period the continents and islands which we
now see wholly separated were joined together at various
points.
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