Still the Permian has some life features of its own, and we must now turn to these. The first is the occurrence here, not only of the representatives of the great Batrachians of the coal period, but of true reptiles, acknowledged to be such by all naturalists. The animals of the genus _Protorosaurus_, found in rocks of this age both in England and Germany, were highly-organised lizards, having socketed teeth like those of crocodiles, and well-developed limbs, with long tails, perhaps adapted for swimming. They have, however, biconcave vertebræ like the lizard-like animals of the coal already mentioned, which, indeed, in their general form and appearance, they must have very closely resembled. The Protorosaurs were not of great size; but they must have been creatures of more stately gait then their Carboniferous predecessors, and they serve to connect them with the new and greater reptiles of the next period.
Another interesting feature of the Permian is its flora, which, in so far as known, is closely related to that of the coal period, though the species are regarded as different; some of the forms, however, being so similar as to be possibly identical. In a picture of the Permian flora we should perhaps place in the foreground the tree-ferns, which seem to have been very abundant, and furnished with dense clusters of aërial roots to enable them to withstand the storms of this boisterous age. The tree-ferns, now so plentiful in the southern hemisphere, should be regarded as one of the permanent vegetable institutions of our world--those of the far-back Lower Devonian, and of all intervening ages up to the present day, having been very much alike. The great reed-like Calamites have had a different fate. In their grander forms they make their last appearance in the Permian, where they culminate in great ribbed stems, sometimes nearly a foot in diameter, and probably of immense height. The brakes of these huge mares'-tails which overspread the lower levels of the Permian in Europe, would have been to us what the hayfields of Brobdingnag were to Gulliver. The Lepidodendra also swarmed, though in diminished force; but the great Sigillariæ of the coal are absent, or only doubtfully present. Another feature of the Permian woods was the presence of many pine-trees different in aspect from those of the coal period. Some of these are remarkable for their slender and delicate branches and foliage.[X] Others have more dense and scaly leaves, and thick short cones.[Y] Both of these styles of pines are regarded as distinct, on the one hand, from those of the coal formation, and on the other from those of the succeeding Trias. I have shown, however, many years ago, that in the upper coal formation of America there are branches of pine-trees very similar to Walchia, and, on the other hand, the Permian pines are not very remote in form and structure from some of their modern relations. The pines of the first of the above-mentioned types (Walchia) may indeed be regarded as allies of the modern Araucarian pines of the southern hemisphere, and of the old conifers of the Carboniferous. Those of the second type (Ulmannia) may be referred to the same group with the magnificent Sequoias or Redwoods of California.