The great work of this Devonian age seems to be the rapid laying down of beds of red sandstone. This red sandstone, deposited by the waters, finally rises into vast continents, joining island to island, and spreading out a rich soil, very fit for vegetable life. Vegetation creeps away beyond the polar circles; for in this time the climate of the earth is nearly uniform. Let us fancy we meet an Afrite, and say to him, “Of what use is all this land and vegetation?” He replies, “O Pixy! a new age is coming,--the age of coal. In it vast beds of coal will be laid down to feed future fires for a creature called man. These beds will have oil, gas, naphtha, all things in which we Afrites rejoice. These carbon beds will be merely storehouses of well-cooked vegetation, for warming and lighting a world.” But as we Pixies stand and talk with Afrites at the limit where land and water meet, what do we see? We see thousands of insects in the air and creeping on the ground,--cockroaches, dragon-flies, weevils. And now, oh, wonder of wonders! what fearful thing is this? A REPTILE HAS APPEARED! Frogs and toads of curious patterns have foreshadowed him, but the true reptile was the first vertebrate lung-breathing animal. You perceive it is a vast advance on earlier forms, for a creature to have a nose, to be able to inhale air through its nostrils! The life-filled, tree-filled Carboniferous age, with its continents was long, very long; and now, when life seemed everywhere to dominate, these continents slowly sank beneath the waters, and the Permian age came on,--the age of the death and burial of a busy world,--the last age of the ancient life time. The sinking was slow at first, so slow that trees grew above the buried trees; but at last the sinking hastened, and stones and sand and surf dashed and rolled above the forests, and the Coal age was drowned. The reason of this sinking was, that the interior of the globe had continued to cool and harden, and with cooling shrank from the crust, which collapsed in great wrinkles. The collapse was slow, because much of the interior rock was in a wax-like condition, and crowded up to fill the rents left in the downward pressure of the earth-crust. The heat, pressure, collapse, half-fluid state, explain to us many of the curiosities of geologic formations. After these convulsions the surface again arose, land lifted above the water, and the Permian age exhibited a flora very like that of the preceding age. The great frogs, toads, and lizards increased in size and numbers. The convulsions of the Permian had not destroyed all land life, and probably the sea-depths with their inhabitants had been but little effected. The buried forests of the previous age were slowly changed into the coal-beds of to-day, and in them we find, held for our study, seeds, roots, leaves, insects, and footprints, belonging to the long-gone ancient life time. FOOTNOTES: [9] Nature Reader, No. 1, Lesson 39.