[Illustration:  FIG. 1.  NORTH AMERICA IN CAMBRIAN TIME.]

The next set of periods is known as the Devonian.  It is marked by the rapid extension of the fishes; for, although the fishes began in the uppermost Silurian, they first became abundant in this time.  These, the first strong-jawed tyrants of the sea, came all at once, like a rush of the old Norman pirates into the peaceful seas of Great Britain.  They made a lively time among the sluggish beings of that olden sea.  Creatures that were able to meet feebler enemies were swept away or compelled to undergo great changes, and all the life of the oceans seems to have a spur given to it by these quicker-formed and quicker-willed animals.  In this Devonian section of our rocks we have proofs that the lands were extensively covered with forests of low fern trees, and we find the first trace of air-breathing animals in certain insects akin to our dragon-flies.  In this stage of the earth’s history the fishes grew constantly more plentiful, and the seas had a great abundance of corals and crinoids.  Except for the fishes, there were no very great changes in the character of the life from that which existed in the earlier time of the Cambrian and Silurian.  The animals are constantly changing, but the general nature of the life remains the same as in the earlier time.

[Illustration:  FIG. 2.  RANICEPS LYELLI—­COAL TIME SALAMANDER.]

In the Carboniferous or coal-bearing age, we have the second great change in the character of the life on the earth.  Of the earlier times, we have preserved only the rocks formed in the seas.  But rarely do we find any trace of the land life or even of the life that lived along the shores.  In this Carboniferous time, however, we have very extensive sheets of rocks which were formed in swamps in the way shown in the earlier part of this book.  They constitute our coal-beds, which, though much worn away by rain and sea, still cover a large part of the land surface.  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.  These were nearly as large as alligators, and of much the same shape, but they were probably born from the egg in the shape of tadpoles and lived for a time in the water as our young frogs, toads, and salamanders do.  This is the first step upwards from the fishes to land vertebrates; and we may well be interested in it, for it makes one most important advance in creatures through whose lives our own existence became possible.  Still, these ancient woods of the coal period must have had little of the life we now associate with the forests; there were still no birds, no serpents, no true lizards, no suck-giving animals, no flowers, and no fruits.  These coal-period forests were sombre wastes of shade, with no sound save those of the wind, the thunder, and the volcano, or of the running streams and the waves on the shores.