In character the animals and plants of those early days were very different from those of the present time. Almost all of their kind long ago became extinct. It is only the few who have living representatives anywhere in the world today, and they are degraded in form and size as though they had long outlived their usefulness. Some of the animals live in the waters of distant oceans, such as the brachiopods and other shell fish; the crinoids or sea lilies, and others of like character. On the dry land we find a few insects of the cock-roach type and other creeping things which inhabit dark and damp places, animals of gloom on whose forms the sunshine of day rarely falls. The plants, likewise, are degraded in size and form. The modern bull- rushes of our swamps are descendants of ancient giants of their kind which grew to ten or twenty times the size of their modern representatives. The little creeping vines sometimes found in the shaded forest are lineal descendants of the mighty trees of the forests in the long ago while materials were gathering for the rock masses constituting Atchison county. In order to converse rationally about geological time it has been found most convenient to divide time into periods in accordance with great natural events, and to give a name to each period that in some way expresses something desirable to be known and remembered. Usually geographic names of areas where rock masses are exposed to the surface of the ground are chosen, or some favorite geographic term may be used, and in rare instances some quality name expressive of the character or composition of the rocks. Following the best usage of geologists the rocks exposed at the surface all belong to the age known as the Carboniferous, which lies at the top of the Palaeozoic, or ancient life rocks. The Carboniferous is divided and subdivided into a number of divisions, the lowermost of which has been named the Mississippian on account of their great abundance throughout the Mississippi valley. Above the Mississippian we find a mass of alternating beds of shale and limestone and sandstone aggregating about 2,500 feet in thickness, called the Pennsylvanians, a term borrowed from the State of Pennsylvania, where rocks of the same age so abound. Rocks formed during the remainder of geologic time are not found in Atchison county, except the covering of soil and clay so abundant throughout the county. An old-time name for the Pennsylvanian rocks is the coal-measures, a term now on the decline because the newer names—well, it is newer.