We can note how North China time after time has sunk beneath the sea level, recelvi containing the living or the new period. So the screen pic ture of prehistoric China is unrolled before Our astonished eyes, First the mobs of sea shells and fresh-water £60! shells buried in the ancient rocks. There follows a pageant of wonderful trees, ferns, cycads, conifers, preserved in the coals and in the Associated shales representing long periods of tropical climate. The coal elds as it happens illustrate various periods very clearly. The ancient Permo-Carboniferous flora of the Chen Chia Vu coals and shales tur~ nish examples of 103 species which are curiously local. Such are some fof the horsetails and ferns. Ferns ike Gigantopteris must certainly have existed under tropical conditions.
"The Jurassic flora, represented in the Chai Tang coal elds, includes large arboreal cryptograms. But advanced though these forms are, they are still very unlike the flora of modern times. Deciduous trees, flowering herbs and grasses are miss ing. Fernsare represented by several Tatge and beautiful forms all belonging to the now extinct genera. The greater part of this flora consists of cycads, conifers and ginko, plants. "During the Jurassic "period," says Professor Halle in, his report on these formations, "the whole earth possessed a uniform vegetation, The Climatic differences which existed between the northern and southern hemispheres when this flora existed were broken down, and during the succeeding period the modern for: areas began to develop." three or four minutes but there Righer Animal Forms was no change in the temperature. When the flakes fell to the ground, they immediately melted because lof the heat. But no one believed jit was really snow. Gradually people forgot about this extraordin nary happening but recalled it re-Jcently when snow fell again. Natives of this village have thus been reminded of and are discussing the famous Chinese play, "Snow in summer", which tells of a woman unjustly accused of and condemn-jed to death for murder. On the execution ground, when sentence was about to be carried out on the unfortunate woman, snow fell although it was midsummer. The judge presiding, greatly impressed, regarded it as a sign from heaven its that an injustice had been done so This ti Turning now to the Tertiary flora as depicted in the Fushun coal mines. of Mongolia, we advance to a stage in the history or earth's development in which the plants have already in their main features assumed a mod-fern character. The older floras noticed, as well as the Permian flora of the Kaiping and Talyuantu mines, belong to very remote eras, the earliest and middle, of the during which the lower pla related to our modern mosses, horsetails, ferns and conifers, predominate ed. "With the ansition from the Cretaceous age to the Tertiary there occurred a rapid and comprehensive change in the living organisms of the whole earth, and these investigations in China reveal very clearly that hhere also, as elsewhere, the higher animal forms developed rapidly. The giant saurians, the dinosaurs, which had hitherto been the lords of creation, quickly died out In their place the mammals, which till then existed in small-sized forms as it were obscurely, assumed importance. With regard io this Professor Anderson says—"It Is possible that this radical change in animal life. is connected with the equally profound and ayn~ chronous development of plant life. Animal life is, of course, entirely Gependent upon plant fe, and it seems possible that the dinosaurs did not thrive on the new flora which developed at the end of the Cretacefous age." On the whole the Fushun fora shows indications of a temperate climate, and nothing points: to troplcal oF even sub-tropleal_ conditions.
The Dragon Era We must now turn to these saurians and dinosaurs to which reference has been made. Dragon's bones and dragon's teeth are a well known fe: ture of Chinese medicine: and it has since been ascertained, as 1 shall Geseribe later, that these products are derived not only from the fossil re~ mains of saurians, but also from those of evtinet mammals. Thdeed, ingvir= Jes in the apothecaries' shops as to the regions whence these drugs we obtained helped materially in locat-Ing. the deposits. Dinosaur bones were first found at Ning Chia Kou not far from Talanfu—(Shantung), where Dr. Zdansky followed up Pro: fessor Anderson's. preliminary survey. The strange creature which he Yound, Helopus Zdansky, is about ten metres long, and may be described a sort of amphibian elephant with the neck and tail of a snake. 'The body' war short with four elephant ike' legs close together. The neck and tail were very lon head small. The prevalence of vilege, the broadly' splayed fee the alr spaces inthe vertebrae and pelvis, suggest that this gigantic Ereature which could scarcely" sup= ort itself on land was more ike a fresh-water whale in its habits than terrestrial animal. It might indeed furnish copy for Loch Ness monster fans, for it lived at the bottom of lakes and swamps. browsing on the vegetation, and raising its long neck the surface "for an' occasional breath of alr. It lived apparently in Cretaceous times.
"Tantus sinensis from another part of eastern Shangtung was a dinosaur almost as large as Helopus, but more like a kangaroo as to its massive hind legs and tail and its short arms. Un~ Ike Helopus, Tantus hada thick, heavy head:' but it had the same sort of acquatie habits.
'The picture we get of this Cretaceous China is of shallow, sandy lakes. "Conifers and ferns fringe the low shores, and many strangly formed plants' shimmer at the bottom of the shallow lakes. There are turtle on the and here and there fon the lake surface Helopus raises Its periscope-like head." Quite suddenly these vast saurians. variis ical scheme of time it was the ry age, the new age in the history of the earth, which here and the frst part of this once identified in China, w to occur to a thick ness of st 1,000 metres Shantung and Shansi where it is superimposed partly on Cretaccous sandstones. and parily on older rock.
(Fo be continued)
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.