Passing along to the next evidence of the rocks, we find an age of reptiles in the Mesozoic period. Here, again, the number and variety is most striking; here, again, the size is enormous in comparison with that of the present-day members of the group. This was the dominant race at the time when the birds and mammals first appeared on the earth, and anatomists recognize in these extinct reptilian forms two types; the one bird-like, the other more mammalian in character. From some members of the former group birds are supposed to have been evolved, and mammals from members of the other group. There is no question of their origin directly from lower fish-like forms; the time of their appearance on the earth, their structure, all point irresistibly to the same conclusion as we have arrived at from the consideration of the origin of the biped from the quadruped mammal, viz. that birds and mammals arose, in consequence of the struggle for existence, from some members of the reptilian race which at that time was the dominant one on earth. Passing down the geological record, we find that when the reptiles first appear in the Carboniferous age there is abundant evidence of the existence of numbers of amphibian forms. At this time the giant Labyrinthodonts flourished. Here among the swamps and marshes of the coal-period the prevalent vertebrate was amphibian in structure. Their variety and number were very great, and at that period they attained their greatest size. Here, again, from the geological record we draw the same conclusion as before, that the reptiles arose from the race which was then predominant on the earth--the Amphibia. {22}[Illustration: FIG. 4.--PLAN OF GEOLOGICAL STRATA. (From LANKESTER.)] {23}Again, another point of great interest is seen here, and that is that these Labyrinthodonts, as Huxley has pointed out, possess characters which bring them more closely than the amphibians of the present day into connection with the fishes; and further, the fish-like characters they possessed are those of the Ganoids, the Marsipobranchs, the Dipnoans, and the Elasmobranchs, rather than of the Teleosteans.