Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/299

Rh contain the remains of Trilobites; so that, during the long periods that intervened between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the termination of the Coal formation, the Trilobites appear to have been the chief representatives of a class which was largely multiplied into other orders and families, after these earliest forms of marine Crustaceans became extinct.

The fossil remains of this family have long attracted attention, from their strange peculiarities of configuration. M. Brongniart, in his valuable History of Trilobites, 1822, enumerated five genera, and seventeen species; other writers (Dalman, Wahlenberg, Dekay, and Green,) have added five more genera, and extended the number of species to fifty-two; examples of four of these genera are given in Plate 46. Fossils of this family were long confounded with Insects, under the name of Entomolithus paradoxus; after many disputes respecting their true nature, their place has now been fixed in a separate section of the class Crustaceans, and although the entire family appears to have been annihilated at so early a period as the termination of the Carboniferous strata, they nevertheless present