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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75564 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  PUZZLE OF LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY
+  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+  AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  _Frontispiece_
+
+_The Mammoth._]
+
+
+
+
+  THE PUZZLE OF LIFE;
+
+  AND
+
+  HOW IT HAS BEEN PUT TOGETHER.
+
+  A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH,
+  WITH ITS VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE,
+  FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES,
+
+  INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF
+
+  _PRE-HISTORIC MAN, his WEAPONS, TOOLS and WORKS_.
+
+  BY
+
+  ARTHUR NICOLS, F.R.G.S.
+
+  _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by FREDERICK WADDY._
+
+  SECOND EDITION.
+
+  LONDON:
+  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
+  1877.
+
+  _All rights reserved._
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+
+  MY YOUNG FRIENDS
+
+  BEATRIX, GUY, SYLVIA, MAY, AND GERALD.
+
+  THE CHILDREN OF
+
+  GEORGE DU MAURIER.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+The favourable reception accorded to the first edition has induced me
+to give the present a more definite educational character. Foot-notes
+are appended, referring to the position in the British Museum of all
+the principal antiquities, fossils, and implements mentioned in the
+text; so that the specimens can easily be found by any young student
+who wishes, with the book in his hand, to make himself familiar with
+these records of past time. This will probably facilitate the search
+for and recognition of specimens by the reader.
+
+The additions to the text consist chiefly of a more extended account of
+the deposition of chalk and other deep-sea formations, founded on the
+results of the “Challenger” and “Tuscarora” expeditions, and a sketch
+of the earthworks of the Ohio mound-builders and the stone monuments
+of Easter Island. Examples of pre-historic art and lake-dwellings have
+been added to the illustrations.
+
+  A. N.
+
+ HAMPSTEAD: _March 1877_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+TO
+
+THE FIRST EDITION.
+
+
+Having found that children could be interested in the history of life
+upon the Earth, and that it appealed forcibly to their understanding,
+I considered that a little book upon the subject might give them
+the taste for more extended study in after years. The difficulty of
+treating the, to them, novel conclusions of geology, often founded on
+abstract reasoning, in language simple in form yet stating clearly the
+great principles upon which this reasoning rests, will probably be
+apparent on every page. Breadth, rather than minuteness, has been aimed
+at, in the belief that a general view, not overcrowded with details,
+is likely to be the most impressive. Thus, in the geological part the
+leading features of the succession of strata have been preserved,
+but no details of systematic classification entered into. Similarly,
+Primeval Man is considered mainly with reference to gradual progress
+from a rude to a more civilized condition. To have been more explicit,
+where there is still much difference of opinion, would have obscured
+the main facts of the evidence for man’s great antiquity.
+
+The illustrations are typical examples of the three arbitrary but
+convenient divisions of the history of life—the vegetable, the animal,
+and the human—such as will be most readily met with in museums.
+Slight as this sketch is, the liking for it shown by some intelligent
+children, who saw it in manuscript, encouraged me to believe that there
+are many others to whom it might prove interesting.
+
+Some acquaintance with the leading facts in science is daily becoming
+more necessary to those who aspire to liberal culture, and instruction
+in them is a recognised feature in the curriculum of some public and
+leading private schools. Thus, it is hoped that the present volume
+may to some extent serve as a text-book without the severity of such
+a form. The best English and foreign authorities have been consulted,
+and other trustworthy sources—as papers read before scientific
+societies—drawn upon, bringing the information down to the latest time.
+Though these pages are designed for young persons, other readers,
+perhaps, who are not familiar with the subject, may find some interest
+in them if they are not deterred by the necessarily simple style.
+
+My thanks are due to Mr. H. B. WOODWARD, of the Geological Survey
+of England and Wales, for some valuable suggestions made during the
+progress of the work.
+
+  A. N.
+
+ HAMPSTEAD: _November 1876_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+  THE FRAMEWORK OF THE PUZZLE                                          1
+
+  THE GEOLOGICAL PART                                                 17
+
+  THE VEGETABLE PART                                                  56
+
+  THE ANIMAL PART                                                     77
+
+  THE HUMAN PART                                                     120
+
+  CONCLUSION                                                         168
+
+  INDEX                                                              171
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+  THE MAMMOTH                                             _Frontispiece_
+
+     I. UPHEAVAL: SUBSIDENCE: DENUDATION                              51
+
+    II. DIFFERENT KINDS OF PLANTS OF THE COAL FORESTS                 65
+
+   III. TRILOBITE                                                     79
+
+    IV. FOOTPRINTS OF LABYRINTHODON: FOOTPRINTS OF BIRDS,
+         (2) WITH MARKS OF RAIN-DROPS                                 83
+
+     V. FISH-REPTILES                                                 87
+
+    VI. BIRD-REPTILES                                                 93
+
+   VII. FOSSILS OF THE CHALK                                          97
+
+  VIII. GIGANTIC IRISH STAG (CERVUS MEGACEROS)                       108
+
+    IX. THE MEGATHERIUM                                              112
+
+     X. 1. FLINT ARROW-HEAD; 2. STONE AXE IN HANDLE; 3. FLINT KNIFE;
+          4. BONE HARPOON; 5. BONE NEEDLES; 6. SCEPTRE MADE OF HORN;
+          7. MARROW SPOON                                            129
+
+    XI. EXAMPLES OF PRE-HISTORIC DRAWINGS                            135
+
+   XII. LAKE-DWELLINGS                                               148
+
+  XIII. THE GUADALOUPE HUMAN FOSSIL                                  159
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+PUZZLE OF LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+_THE FRAMEWORK OF THE PUZZLE._
+
+
+You must often have looked with wondering eyes at this World of ours,
+and asked yourselves questions about it. How did it come here? What is
+it made of? How old is it? All of them questions not to be answered
+without a great deal of thought and study, and even then not so
+perfectly as we should like. It is easy to say “It is here,” and “It is
+made of earth,” and “It surely must be old,” but that will not satisfy
+us. We want to know something more certain than this, if possible. We
+can see that a clock goes with wheels, but we are not very intelligent
+people if we do not want to find out what makes the clock go. One way
+of finding out is to pull things to pieces, but we cannot exactly do
+this with the World. We must think about it, and put together all the
+knowledge we can gain from the outside and inside, and from the other
+Worlds around us, which we can see, and when we have done this we may
+get something like answers to our questions.
+
+How did it come here? But this is not quite the right way of asking the
+question, because the World is never for two moments together in the
+same place. It is travelling in a great circle round the Sun at the
+rate of more than sixty thousand miles an hour, and has been ever since
+it was formed. That is a wonderful arrangement by which all Worlds
+travel round some other World larger than themselves, in greater or
+less circles, and we do not know why it is, though we are certain that
+it is so. The Moon travels round us once in about every month, and we
+and the Moon together round the Sun once in every year.
+
+Then again, other planets, with their moons, such as Jupiter, for
+instance, travel round the Sun in much larger circles than our World,
+and take many years to do the journey, while Venus, which is nearer the
+Sun than we are, travels in a much smaller circle, and takes less time.
+We do not perceive that we are moving so fast because everything we
+see is moving equally fast with us; but there is no doubt that we are
+spinning along at sixty thousand miles an hour.
+
+If we ask an astronomer how our World came into existence, he will tell
+us that it is probably a mass separated from the Sun, that it was once
+red-hot, and that it slowly cooled down until animals and plants could
+live upon it. He will tell us besides, that he can see mountains and
+valleys in our Moon, and land and sea, snow and clouds, on the planet
+Mars, with his great telescopes. When he thinks about the planets and
+our own World, then he believes them to be pieces of some much larger
+World—perhaps the Sun—which now travel round the Sun and receive their
+light and heat from it. The World is made of what we call “earth,” and
+it is of this I mean to tell you now—how it was formed, what changes
+have taken place in it, what plants and animals have lived upon it,
+and what reasons there are for thinking that it is an exceedingly old
+place, with a long and interesting story to tell.
+
+Little was known thirty or forty years ago by the most learned men
+about the age of our World, and it was thought that the human race
+had not lived here very long. It was indeed known that many large
+animals, whose huge bones have been found, must have lived before man
+came to inhabit the Earth, and that even far smaller creatures—such
+as fishes, and crabs, and insects, and shell-fish—most probably lived
+for many generations, and died and left their bones and shells in the
+soil long before the first man or the first tribes of men came to
+share the World with them. I hope to be able to tell you something of
+the strange and beautiful history of all these animals, and of man
+himself, and to show you what reasons there are now for thinking that
+the human race has inhabited this Earth for a very long time indeed,
+and how all this knowledge has been gained and put together piece by
+piece. It is something like the different parts of a puzzle-map, which
+might be scattered all over the house, and found at one time or another
+in different places, and at last made up altogether. Some parts of
+the puzzle have not been found yet certainly; but so many have been
+collected, and they fit into one another so well, that we can begin to
+see its real shape and size. It will perhaps be a very long time before
+some of the missing pieces are found; but in the meantime we can go on
+without them, and put the framework together, and no doubt in time we
+shall see what our puzzle, the history of life on the Earth, was like.
+
+Before telling you what its parts are, I ought to say where many of
+them have been found, and how they are still being looked for. They are
+found _upon_ the ground, _under_ it, in caves, in rivers, and in the
+sea. Since railways have been in use a great many tunnels have been
+made, as well as very deep cuttings through hills, and some of these
+are several miles long. In this way we have come to know something
+of the Earth below the surface. Some of these tunnels are bored right
+through high hills and even mountains, and the cuttings are deep
+enough to hide high houses if they were put into them. While digging
+these the workmen have found many of the parts of our puzzle, which
+are the bones of animals, and fishes, and shells, and even smaller
+things—such as insects. These could not possibly have been put there
+by anyone, because they were many, many yards below the surface, and,
+until they were dug up, nobody imagined that they could be there. Many
+other things besides have been dug out of these places, but nearer the
+surface, such as weapons and tools made of flint, and stone, and bone,
+and metal, and pieces of rough crockery, and various ornaments, all
+of which must at some time or other have been made and used by people
+very like ourselves. In digging canals, too, the same kinds of things
+have been found, and some caves are almost filled up with them. We have
+other means, too, of knowing what is under the surface of the ground
+we walk upon. Many of the coal-mines are so deep that the Tower of
+London, or St. Paul’s Cathedral, or York Minster, or even the Pyramids
+of Egypt could be buried in them! In digging these the workmen have
+had to go through a great quantity of earth, sometimes chalk, sand, or
+gravel, or clay or limestone, layer upon layer, placed, like a pile
+of books of different kinds and different thicknesses, one upon the
+other, until they have come to the coal. In these different layers of
+earth parts of the puzzle have been found, and we shall see by-and-by
+what parts have been found in the coal itself. Then again, when deep
+mines are made to get the metals, iron and gold and silver, these
+layers of earth have to be dug through; and when the beautiful kinds
+of stone, like marble and limestone, are wanted, they must be dug out
+of the sides of the hills, and in doing this still more pieces of the
+puzzle come to hand. But there are other places where Nature herself
+seems to have shown us some of them without the trouble of searching
+for them. In many parts of the World, by the sea, and on the banks of
+rivers, there are cliffs hundreds of feet high, like the chalk cliffs
+at Dover and Ramsgate, and the sandy cliffs at Folkestone and on the
+south coast of Devonshire. These cliffs have been cut into by the sea
+very gradually, and a kind of wall has been left, and from the sides of
+the cliffs great numbers of the pieces of the puzzle, bones, shells,
+&c., have been collected and taken away to museums. But the little we
+can do with our mines and railway tunnels is nothing in comparison with
+the work of Nature. In some of the great mountain chains—the Andes, the
+Himalayas, and the Alps, for instance—parts of the sides of mountains
+have fallen down, and rents many miles long have been left, showing
+what had been buried there in the different kinds of soil; and where
+rivers have cut deep, narrow channels through the earth, like the
+Cañons of Colorado, these natural miners have turned out more of the
+parts of “the puzzle of life” than we can with all our labour.
+
+It will not be easy at first to understand all the wonders I have to
+show you, but, when we get further on, you will see them one by one,
+and there will be very little difficulty. You know now where these
+things are to be found: principally in the ground you walk upon,
+without knowing all there is beneath you. The creatures here are
+much more wonderful than any of the monsters of fairy tale or fable,
+because the works of God are greater than the imagination of men who
+have invented the stories of flying dragons and griffins, and trees
+which grew up into the skies; but I cannot help thinking that this
+imagination shows what men thought _might_ once have been, and we shall
+see that “truth is stranger than fiction.” Creatures really did live on
+this Earth of such strange shapes and great size that the imaginations
+of those who wrote the fairy tales did not exaggerate much; and, though
+we know that no flying serpents or immense birds like the Roc are
+living now, and that there is no beanstalk which grows up into the sky
+while we are asleep, we shall see that there were lizards as large as
+whales, and birds taller than elephants, and great sloths stronger than
+the rhinoceros or hippopotamus, and ferns as high as oak trees, and
+mosses as large as gooseberry bushes; and that perhaps these animals
+and plants grew much faster than they do now, and that their dead
+bodies form a very large part of the earth of our World. This is not
+imagination, and when you go to a museum you can see all these wonders
+for yourselves, just as they were taken out of the earth; but of course
+the bones only of the animals are there. The flesh has long since gone
+away, and some of the stalks and fronds (leaves) only of the ferns
+remain to show us how large they must have been when they were alive
+and growing.
+
+It will be necessary to use a few scientific names, most of which are
+borrowed from the Greek and Latin languages, but I will explain the
+meaning of them all, so that they will be easily remembered. First of
+all, then, the pieces of the puzzle are called _fossils_, and the name
+comes from a Latin word meaning “dug out;” because they have been dug
+out of the ground either by man in making railways and mines, or by
+Nature in the many ways in which she works by cutting down cliffs and
+scooping out valleys. These fossils are bones of animals and fishes,
+the skins, shells, and wings of insects, and the stalks and leaves
+of plants, some of which have lain so very long in the ground that
+they have become as hard and heavy as stone. But the shape of them
+always remains, and the moment you look at them you see that they once
+belonged to living creatures.
+
+I shall give you pictures of some of these fossils; and no doubt you
+will be able to find some like them in the chalk and sands of the
+seaside—beautiful shells and bones of fishes. You may pick these out
+of the cliffs, and then go to the pools of salt water left among the
+rocks by the ebbing tide, and compare your fossils with the living
+shell-fish, and see how nearly those inhabitants of the ancient oceans
+resemble the creatures we find now, sporting in the water, just as
+these fossils did when the sand and chalk cliffs were under the sea.
+Of course all the bright colours are gone from the fossils, for the
+colour of animals fades away soon after they die, and the flesh does
+not last long; but the hard parts—the bones and shells—are not easily
+destroyed, because they are made of the same material as rocks. And
+when we look at the fossil plants we see the same thing. The colours of
+the green stems and leaves have quite faded, but the delicate shapes of
+the leaves and branches, and the grain of the wood, can still be seen,
+and you will have no doubt that they once lived and bore flowers and
+fruit, and died, as plants are living and dying every day.
+
+You have got so far now that you know what fossils are, and where they
+may be found. You know that they are the small and large pieces of the
+“puzzle of life”—of all sorts of different shapes and sizes—and you
+know that they are scattered about the Earth, deep down in coal-mines,
+on the tops of mountains, at the bottoms of rivers, in deep caves,
+and under the sea. The patience and industry of clever men have been
+well spent in gathering together all they can find, and arranging
+them in museums for our instruction, and making a history of them
+which is more wonderful than the Arabian Nights, and more beautiful
+because it is all _true_. And, though you may think it strange that I
+promise to show you creatures more marvellous than those of the fairy
+tales, I shall keep that promise faithfully. We shall find no Genii
+with wonderful lamps and magic rings, because they never really lived,
+though it gave us much pleasure and amusement to read about them; but
+we shall see what God, the greatest Genius of all, has done by means of
+His magicians—the laws of Nature. These magicians have built up high
+mountains and dug out valleys, and sent mighty rivers sweeping down
+to the sea, and even filled up oceans with sand and chalk, and buried
+ancient forests deep down under sea and land. They worked with fire,
+and air, and water; not quickly, but with such strength that nothing
+could resist them, and they gradually moulded the Earth into the
+beautiful thing it is, so that
+
+    In contemplation of created things,
+    By steps we may ascend to God.—_Milton._
+
+But, lovely as the Earth is, we should not perhaps have thought so
+much of it if there had been nothing to discover. We see that it has
+been prepared for us an immensely long time ago; and when we know a
+little, we want to search further and find out what the whole plan of
+Creation is, so far as we can. You will be surprised when you know how
+many signs of past life there are around you—many more than you can see
+with the eye. The Earth is one great burying-place of creatures which
+have passed away. You are walking over their dead and fossil bodies
+at almost every step. They are built into the walls of our houses,
+and there are millions of them in some of the commonest stones of the
+pavement. Those round, smooth pebbles, called flint stones, which we
+pick out of the gravel walks, were once partly such soft tender things
+as sponges; but time has hardened them, and they have been rolled
+together in seas and rivers by the always moving water until they have
+become quite different to look at from the rough blue flints they were
+when they were washed out of the chalk beds. When you are walking
+along the sands of some seacoasts, you are treading on little specks
+of these small flints which have been ground down fine in that great
+mill, the ocean. The sponges, then, did some part in the building up of
+the Earth. The very chalk you draw with is composed of the shells of
+sea-animals. Your slates and slate pencils were once a fine mud at the
+bottom of the sea, since become so hard that it is used for covering
+the roofs of our houses, and in this mud lived myriads of small
+shell-fish which have sometimes left their frail houses in the slate
+beds to tell us how they were made. That slate is the hardened mud of
+an old sea bottom, there is no doubt at all.
+
+There are many other things in common use which show us the life that
+was.
+
+Perhaps you did not know that coals are _compressed plants_, and that
+we are now burning the vegetation of the past time! But these will be
+described in their right places by-and-by, and you will see how certain
+it is that some of the commonest things we use were living creatures
+and graceful plants.
+
+Here is “the framework” of the puzzle, and I think you will agree with
+me that we shall have pleasure in putting it together with all the
+queerly-shaped pieces we shall find in the following chapters. We have
+fossil plants to show us what grew upon the Earth, fossil bones to tell
+us what animals lived here, and thousands of different kinds of fossil
+shells and fishes to show us that the seas in the long past time were
+crowded with life; and besides, though there are no written histories
+of the men whom we shall read about, they, too, have left many things
+which they used in the caves where they lived and in their graves, to
+make us feel certain that they were some of the oldest people that
+ever lived. With all these things to help us, it will be strange if we
+cannot make out a great deal of the history of life upon our Earth.
+
+
+
+
+_THE GEOLOGICAL PART._
+
+
+You will have learned from other books something about the size and
+shape of our World: for instance, that it is a great round body, or
+rather more like an orange, a little flatter one way than the other,
+and about 8,000 miles through, from one side to the other, and that
+it turns round once in every twenty-four hours; but I have only to
+tell you now what it is made of. The material is called rock, earth,
+or soil; and there are many kinds of it, such as granite, gravel,
+clay, sand, chalk, mud, and so on; and we shall see that many of these
+different soils contain different fossils.
+
+It is supposed that a very long time passed while these were being
+laid one upon another, and before many plants or animals lived here,
+and there are good reasons for thinking that underneath these soils
+the Earth is very hot, perhaps in a melting state, because we know
+that volcanoes like Vesuvius and Ætna throw out flame and smoke and
+lava, which is melted earth and rock; and that this lava has run down
+the sides of the mountains for miles, in a great stream of liquid
+material, and covered up and destroyed whole villages and towns. You
+have heard of earthquakes, when the ground shakes and cracks, and
+houses are thrown down, as they have often been in Spain, Italy, and
+South America. This convinces us that the inside of the earth must be
+very different from the outside. Two or three years ago Mount Vesuvius
+was boiling up, and the people of Naples feared that it would throw
+out some of the terrible lava and red-hot cinders, and burn up their
+vineyards and perhaps injure their city; and during the last two or
+three years many people have been killed by earthquakes in South
+America. These things seldom happen in the North of Europe, and when
+they do they are only slightly felt, and people are not killed, neither
+are houses thrown down. Still, this shows that there must be some
+great force underneath us, and very much heat. We see nothing of this
+when we look upon the green fields, and we should scarcely think it
+possible if there were not histories about these eruptions, as they are
+called. But when I tell you that I have felt the Earth tremble, and
+seen fire rushing out from the top of a high mountain whose sides were
+covered with snow, you will understand how real it is—though it may
+seem so strange.
+
+People at one time liked to fancy that powerful spirits lived in
+volcanoes and made them their workshops: but we know better now.
+
+Well, the interior of the Earth is evidently very different from the
+part we live upon; and it is the outside we have to think about now,
+which would be dreadfully cold if the sun did not shine upon it, though
+the inside is so hot.
+
+I have called this “the Geological Part,” and the name Geological comes
+from two Greek words meaning “a talk about the earth;” but now you know
+it in its English dress it will be easy to recollect it. Geology is
+then the study of the many kinds of rocks and fossils which makeup our
+World, but we must know something of the way in which they are placed.
+
+You may have noticed, if you have made many journeys to different
+parts of England or Wales, that the rocks or soils are very different
+in various places. Sometimes we find numerous chalk-pits, as in parts
+of Kent, or Sussex; if we go into Devonshire we may notice the very
+red colour of the soil and of the cliffs, especially near Sidmouth,
+Dawlish, and Teignmouth; in North Wales we find great quarries and
+hills of slate; while around London we see a great deal of clay used
+for making bricks, and called the London clay, as well as many pits in
+gravel so useful for making paths and mending roads, and in Kent and
+Sussex chalk cliffs and hills are common.
+
+Now after studying these various rocks all over our country, we find
+that there is a certain regular order in which they are found; some
+have been made a long time before others, and while most kinds contain
+some fossils, those found in the oldest rocks are much less like the
+living plants and animals than the fossils we find in the newer rocks.
+
+But you will want to know how it is that we can tell that one rock
+is older than another, when both appear at the surface of the earth.
+It would take a long time to make sure of this for ourselves, but
+it will be enough to say that the various cliffs, quarries, and
+railway-cuttings often show one kind of rock resting upon another,
+and these always occur in a certain order. Thus we never find the
+Chalk resting on the London Clay, but we constantly find the London
+Clay resting on the Chalk. And this is proved in another way, by deep
+well-borings. Underneath London many wells have been carried down right
+through the London Clay, and if only continued deep enough they always
+reach the Chalk. In the same way, the order of the other rocks has
+been ascertained in different parts of the country, by examining all
+the pits and quarries, and cliffs and cuttings, with the help of what
+knowledge can be obtained from deep mines and wells.
+
+You will now begin to wonder why the older rocks should appear at the
+surface. I have told you about earthquakes, and you will find that many
+dreadful earthquakes must in former times have ravaged our country.
+The reason why the old rocks come to the surface is because they have
+been lifted up sometimes violently, but more often very slowly. And the
+newer rocks which formerly rested on them have very often been quite
+washed away, either by the sea or by rivers and little streams which
+formerly acted upon them.
+
+Suppose then we take six books, some thick and some thin, and pile
+them up together on the table, the lowest being a good thick one. The
+lowest we will call granite, the next slate, the third sandstone, the
+fourth coal, the fifth chalk, and the sixth the London clay. These will
+represent some of the principal kinds of earths, and you can fancy many
+more with other names coming between them; but the London clay can
+never be below the granite nor the chalk below the coal, for the great
+coal beds were formed long before the chalk and clay. They generally
+come in much the same order as we have named them, hard rocks like
+granite at the bottom, and softer earths, like sandstone, chalk and
+clay, a long way above them. But we do not always find all these earths
+in one place even if we dig ever so deeply, though the granite would
+always be found at the bottom if we went deep enough.
+
+Sometimes the granite and other old rocks have been pushed through
+the upper layers by some great force, and have broken them and risen
+above them in magnificent mountain chains, like those of the Andes in
+South, and the Rocky Mountains in North America, the Wicklow Mountains
+in Ireland, the Grampians in Scotland, and the Cornish mountains in
+England. We can easily suppose that the lowest of our books (the
+granite book) has been pushed upwards by some great force from below,
+and parts of it broken through the others, and raised high above them;
+and this is what has actually been done with real rocks. And as this
+kind of upheaval has taken place at different periods of the earths
+history, we find that granites have come to the surface at different
+times.
+
+When the layers are thus broken through they are often tilted up on end
+and tumbled about in confusion. But where there has been no disturbance
+like this, they generally rest evenly upon one another in their proper
+order.
+
+Granite, and rocks of the same kind, are not in the least like chalk,
+or clay, or even sandstone, and when once you have seen any of these
+you will not be likely to mistake it for the others. Granite is
+excessively hard, and has a beautiful appearance when polished, with a
+number of brilliant white and some dark specks in it. It is used for
+paving the streets of towns, for which purpose it is cut into oblong
+blocks, and for the pillars of fine buildings. Sometimes it is dark
+brown, sometimes reddish, but generally a bluish grey. This rock is
+composed of a great quantity of crystals, and for this reason it is
+thought it must have been melted at one time by intense heat in the
+earth, and afterwards slowly cooled. Chalk is very different, and
+sandstone, though it is also hard, not in the least like granite.
+
+
+HOW THE ROCKS WERE FORMED.
+
+What I have just said is about all that we know of the formation of the
+oldest and hardest granite rocks: but there is something going on now
+which confirms the belief that the materials of which they are made
+were melted together by a greater heat than we can make in our furnaces
+for melting iron; for I should tell you that it is easier to melt iron
+and copper than granite rocks. Volcanoes often throw out melted earths
+which when cooled appear to be made of much the same materials as these
+granites.
+
+
+SANDSTONE.
+
+But we know more of the manner of the formation of sandstone. This rock
+is composed of rounded grains of sand just like that we find upon the
+sea shore. If you take a handful of this sand and squeeze it tightly,
+it will keep together a little while. Now suppose a quantity of this
+sand was pressed by a very great weight—the weight of a large hill
+for instance—after many years the grains would stick firmly together,
+and become a sort of stone. It is in this way the sandstones must have
+been formed, and perhaps heat helped the work, though not so great a
+heat as melted the granite. The sand, after it had been washed upon
+the sea shore, became gradually covered with other earths hundreds of
+feet thick, and the immense weight above it pressed it into stone: but
+you may imagine how very long a time it took to do this. Sandstones
+are used for building, but they do not last very long; the frost makes
+little cracks in them and they soon crumble away to the grains of sand
+of which they were made. Several fossils are found in some of these
+sandstones, which have been formed at many different periods of the
+earth’s history.
+
+
+CHALK.
+
+You have seen those high cliffs of chalk along the south coast of
+England, perhaps, and you have wondered what that beautiful white
+earth was, and how it came there. It is found in many parts of the
+world, and the south and south-east of England are to a great extent
+composed of it. The material is called by chemists carbonate of lime.
+It is almost entirely made up of minute shells called _foraminifera_,
+from two Latin words which mean that there are many openings or
+chambers in their shells, and there are many beautiful fossils called
+_ammonites_ imbedded in the chalk. These are shell-fish, two or three
+inches, and sometimes a foot across, and their shape is very like that
+of the young leaves of the common fern before it has opened in the
+spring.
+
+Millions of these tiny foraminifera are living now in parts of the
+Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and when they die their shells sink to the
+bottom and form a greyish mud, something like chalk.
+
+When H.M.S. “Challenger” was sent out in the year 1873, to find out
+what was at the bottom of the deepest seas of the World, great interest
+was felt in the expedition, because we were sure that we should learn
+something about the manner in which some of the rocks were formed.
+
+We knew that the whole of the beds of the present seas must be
+receiving the washings of the rivers and the bodies of many fishes and
+animals, and that the rocks of the future must be forming down there
+by these accumulations. Long lines were let down from the ship with a
+dredge at the end, and thus parts of the bottom of the sea were brought
+up and carefully examined. It was found that the washings, stones,
+clay, and mud of the land were carried hundreds of miles out to sea,
+and laid upon the bottom. But in the deeper parts, where the Alps would
+be almost covered—there was a fine grey mud composed almost entirely of
+the shells of the little foraminifera, and this, no doubt, is the chalk
+of future times, or perhaps limestone of a harder kind. Deeper, too,
+than where this grey mud is found, there is a reddish mud, exceedingly
+fine and soft. We cannot exactly say yet whether this is formed from
+the remains of shell-fish; but it is, at all events, very like the clay
+of the land, and in some future time will most likely become like
+that stiff mud we know so well. So that even the materials for bricks
+are being made now, and perhaps when all those hundreds of islands
+scattered about the Pacific Ocean are joined into one great Continent,
+this red mud will be raised and made use of for building the houses of
+new peoples and nations.
+
+When we see this going on now, of course it is very easy to conclude
+that the chalk, a great deal of which is above the sea now, must have
+been formed in the same way at the bottom of an ancient ocean, and
+afterwards raised by the same kind of upward force which made the
+granite break through other earths.
+
+If we did not know that the same cause was at work now, and that the
+same kinds of shell-fish were living and laying down new beds of chalk
+under the sea, we should not know how to account for the quantities of
+chalk in the world. For innumerable ages these little creatures have
+thus been paving the floor of the ocean with their dead bodies, and you
+may suppose that countless millions of them must have lived and died!
+In some of the chalks the shells of the foraminifera can be quite
+distinctly seen with a microscope, and when these are compared with the
+shells of living ones, they are seen to be almost exactly alike. Next
+time you pass through one of the railway cuttings through the chalk
+in going to Brighton, or Ramsgate, or Dover, remember that those high
+cliffs were built up by these Liliputian giants under the sea, and you
+may think of the chalk as “foraminifera earth”.
+
+
+COAL.
+
+You see this black shining substance almost every day, and you know it
+is dug up from very deep pits where the poor miners are often killed by
+explosions of gas escaping from it. But it is as well to know what it
+is and how it comes to be so useful to us. In the language of chemistry
+it is called “carbon”, and a great writer has given it the poetical
+name of “compressed sunlight”. But you will ask how sunlight could
+possibly get into a deep mine, and how it could be compressed there.
+You will see that the explanation is really quite simple by-and-by.
+This coal was once above ground, and was a splendid forest of waving
+palm-trees, and ferns, and gigantic mosses, as you will see by the
+pictures of the fossils of them.
+
+Many of the animals and plants of past times were giants compared to
+those living now, of the same species or kind, and many of the plants
+of the present time are dwarfs to those of the same kind which formed
+the coal beds. Many generations of trees must have grown and died, and
+others must have sprung up, and so on, until beds of them, some ten,
+others twenty, or even thirty feet thick, were formed. Here, buried in
+the coal, are the stems, leaves, bark, roots, fruit, and seeds of these
+trees, and we can have no doubt that almost the whole of the coal is
+composed of them. You must not expect to find the shapes of these in
+every piece of coal you may happen to look at, because most of it has
+been greatly changed by the great weight and pressure upon it, and the
+length of time: but it is certainly all the same substance—wood turned
+into coal. The fossil plants of the coal are of course entirely black,
+but there is no mistake about their having once been living plants.
+
+You will ask perhaps how the coal came to be buried so deep. It is not
+so always, being sometimes at the surface. But just as the granite has
+been pushed up through the other rocks, so has the coal in some places
+been uplifted and in others has sunk down. It was often covered up by
+other earths to a great depth, after the trees which composed it had
+died; but where it is now at the surface these newer earths have been
+afterwards worn away. When the sun shone upon these coal trees they
+took its warmth and light into their stems and leaves, for they could
+not live without, and this made them grow so fast and become so large
+that it is not untrue to call coal “compressed sunlight.” Charcoal is
+in some respects so like coal that it would seem to you at once that
+they were probably the same material. Charcoal is simply burnt wood,
+and when the coal forests had died down, and when these beds sank down
+beneath other layers the pressure and heat together turned the wood
+and leaves into a hard mass like charcoal in colour, but heavier and
+more solid, and just enough of the stems and leaves have been left to
+enable us to know with certainty that coal was once wood.
+
+We light our fires now and drive our steam-engines with the heat of the
+sun which shone upon the coal forests, and has been stored up for many
+thousands of years in the Earth, to be brought out once more to give us
+light and warmth.
+
+
+CLAY AND MUD.
+
+While the ancient forests were growing up to form the coal beds,
+and the foraminifera were slowly building up the chalk, as I have
+explained, the Earth was covered with water in some places which are
+now dry land, and the sea now flows over parts of the World which were
+once the habitations of plants and animals. These great changes have
+left their marks upon many a mountain side, and many an old river or
+sea bed has become filled up. A map of Europe during the chalk period
+would show that the places where Paris, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin
+now are were then under the ocean; but since then these places have
+been lifted up, and mud, clay, and gravel swept over the chalk in many
+places by the action of new rivers and seas. Water, you perceive, has
+had a great deal to do with these changes, and indeed it is one of
+Nature’s most powerful tools, for it can wash down rocks and cliffs and
+cut its way in rivers for thousands of miles over the Earth’s surface.
+It carries down mud, and clay, and gravel, and this soil, which has
+been named alluvium, is one of the most interesting of all to us,
+because it contains the bones of the immense animals we shall talk
+about presently, as well as those of the oldest races of men with their
+weapons and ornaments.
+
+The mud age, and we are in the mud and gravel age now, belongs to what
+is called the Tertiary period, and we shall see that this age has
+lasted a very long time already, so long that though it is still going
+on, the most extraordinary animals have lived and died, and not one of
+them is now left alive. Still the same washing and cutting of water is
+going on which buried their bones in swamps, and bogs, and river caves,
+and may perhaps carry away some of the bones of us who are living now,
+to be found ages afterwards by future generations who will read our
+history in these silent witnesses, as we read the history of the tree
+ferns and foraminifera in the coal and the chalk.
+
+The present age of the World’s history is the Mud age, or, as we shall
+call it in future, the Tertiary period, and I think you will agree with
+me when I come to describe it, that it contains the most interesting of
+all the pieces of “the puzzle of life.”
+
+The earth of the Tertiary period is very different from a great many of
+the older earths. Clay, mud, and gravel are the washings only of the
+older rocks, the fine particles which have been worn off from them by
+frost and water and carried down by rivers and left in large beds, and
+sometimes they have a good deal of decayed wood and weeds mixed with
+them. Here are found the bones of the great animals which were so much
+larger and stronger than those of the same kind living now, or any that
+lived before them.
+
+
+UPHEAVAL AND DEPRESSION.
+
+These two words are so often used in books on geology that we shall
+not be able to get on without knowing their meaning. We have seen
+that the rocks have been formed in a certain way—some by heat, some
+by water, and some by dead forests—and that they lie over one another
+in pretty regular order. But this order has sometimes been disturbed
+and the layers have been tumbled about among one another very much. In
+some places the older rocks, such as granite, slate, and sandstone,
+have been pushed up through those above, and in others the coal has
+sunk down and been covered with thick layers of chalk, sand, and mud.
+When the force below pushes a layer up through the others it is called
+_upheaval_, and when a layer sinks down it is called _depression_,
+or _subsidence_. Both these actions are going on now in different
+parts of the Earth. A great part of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, of
+Spitzbergen, Siberia, and the north of America, is being slowly raised
+higher above the sea, as we know by the height their old sea beaches
+now are above the water; while part of the shore of America opposite
+to Europe and also the south of Greenland is slowly sinking down, as
+we know by the remains of land animals and trees which are now covered
+by the tide; and at many places on the coast of India this subsidence
+is also going on. Nearer home, too, there is an example of it in the
+island of Guernsey. All round the coast of this island, like that of
+Jersey, are found tree trunks and other remains of old forest land
+beneath the water. Old histories refer to this as dry land; and if a
+map of it made in 1406 is correct, this land must have sunk about 150
+feet since that time.
+
+Thus we can see, even at the present time, the very same changes which
+have worked upon our Earth for innumerable ages. It is now easy to
+understand how the forests which must have grown above in the air
+have, after a long time, sunk down to a great depth, and been turned
+into coal, and covered with the sediment, sand, gravel, and chalk from
+the seas which afterwards flowed over the places where they grew.
+
+Sometimes the rocks by the sea shore are cut into terraces or steps
+by the constant wear of the water, and when we see these water marks
+far above the present level of the sea we know that the land must have
+been lifted up gradually above the sea. There are many such terraces in
+Norway. To prove whether this is so marks have been cut upon rocks at
+a measured height above the sea, and after some years these marks have
+been noticed to have been raised much above the water by the “upheaval”
+of the earth at that place.
+
+Generally this change of level has taken place gradually, and the
+greatest work in moving the layers of earth and displacing them has
+been very slow. But in some places violent and sudden shocks have
+happened, tearing up the rocks and piling them up in heaps; and now
+and then islands have suddenly appeared in the sea and vanished out
+of sight completely in a short time. Islands have thus come up in the
+Mediterranean Sea within the memory of man. In the year 1831 the island
+of Julia suddenly appeared near the coast of Sicily, and since the year
+186 B.C. no less than three islands have started up in the bay of the
+island of Santorin. In this century islands have appeared among the
+Azores, the Indian Archipelago, the Philippines, the Moluccas, and on
+the coast of Kamtschatka and other places. Some of these have appeared
+suddenly, others slowly, and they no doubt have been raised by a great
+force from below.
+
+You will see now how easy it is to account for the changes of the
+places of the layers of rock. The same thing is going on now which
+has been going on throughout all time, only perhaps with more energy
+formerly than now, making mountains, islands, and continents, raising
+up a large tract of land in one place and sinking an island or a sea
+shore in another.
+
+These changes have been of great use to us too. Suppose all England
+had been covered with coal or slate, we should not have been able to
+grow anything! As it is we have sand and gravel in one county, chalk in
+another, slate or granite in another, and coal down below in several,
+and we can grow a great variety of plants on all these different soils.
+We have to thank “upheaval” and “depression” for this. The force which
+is always working below us has turned up the different soils like a
+gigantic plough, and brought some to the top and covered others, so
+that instead of having to dig down deeper than ever we have yet, we
+have only to go from one county to another to find the different rocks.
+We know that we could not get at the coal in Sussex without going down
+an unknown depth through the chalk and other earths, but we dig for it
+in the North of England, where we know its depth below the surface.
+
+I will try now to give you some idea of the way in which the rocks come
+in their order, or the succession of formations as geologists call
+it. If we started to walk from Wales to London the rocks we should
+pass over would be—slate and flagstones in Wales, and going on towards
+London, limestone, old red sandstone, more limestones, coal beds, new
+red sandstone, oolite, greensand, chalk, and last London clay. We
+might not always find each of these near the surface, but they would
+be found to be the principal rocks on a line between Wales and London,
+the oldest being in Wales and the newest or most recent as we get
+nearer London. That word “oolite” which I used comes from two Greek
+words meaning “roe” and “stone,” because the rock is composed of little
+rounded grains of a chalky substance shaped like the hard roe of a
+fish, or like sago before it is cooked.
+
+If you look at the following table you will see how the principal rocks
+are placed one upon the other, beginning at the lowest or oldest at the
+bottom and going up to the newest at the top of the table, and on the
+right hand side I have written the names of the principal fossils which
+each kind of earth contains.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF THE SUCCESSION OF FORMATIONS.
+
+
+TERTIARY, or Upper Rocks
+
+  Peat bogs and caves          Fossil Man, with stone implements,
+  River-mud and brickearth,     &c., mammoth,
+   gravels, and                 hippopotamus, rhinoceros,
+   boulder clay (alluvium)      Irish stag, cave lion,
+                                &c.
+  Crag of Eastern Counties     Numerous shell-fish, mastodon
+  London clay, &c.             Turtles, crocodiles, shell-fish
+
+
+SECONDARY, or Middle Rocks
+
+
+Cretaceous
+
+  Chalk (with and without      Foraminifera, &c., sponges,
+   flints)                      corals, sea-urchins, shell-fish
+  Greensand and gault           (Belemnites, Ammonites,
+  Wealden clay, &c.             &c.), fishes
+
+
+Oolites
+
+  Portland stone
+  Kimmeridge clay
+  Coral rag                    Immense reptiles, the Ichthyosaurus,
+  Oxford clay                   Plesiosaurus,
+  Cornbrash and forest          Megalosaurus, Pterodactyl,
+    marble                      &c.
+  Great oolite
+  Fullers’ earth               Animals allied to the opossum
+  Lower oolite                  and kangaroo
+
+  Lias clay and limestone      Cycads and other plants
+  New red marl and
+   sandstone
+
+
+PRIMARY, or Lower Rocks
+
+  Coal                         Ferns, club-mosses, a few
+  Millstone grit                firs, calamites, &c., in
+  Mountain limestone            great abundance
+  Old red sandstone            Numerous corals, shell-fish,
+  Silurian limestones and       trilobites, fishes, &c.
+   slates
+  Cambrian slates              The Laurentian rocks contain
+  Laurentian rocks              the oldest known
+                                fossil, the Eozöon (or
+                                “life-dawn animal”)
+
+
+IGNEOUS, or Volcanic Rocks
+
+  Greenstone, basalt           Of various ages (no fossils)
+  Porphyry
+  Granite, &c.
+
+If you read this table upwards from the bottom you will notice that
+life began in a very small way with Eozöon (the “life-dawn animal”),
+that fishes appeared afterwards, that the wonderful forests of the coal
+period then grew and were covered up by other rocks and pressed into
+solid coal, that numbers of great crocodile-like animals lived all
+through the oolite time, how the deep wide beds of chalk were laid down
+by humble foraminifera, and when we get to the recent newest beds of
+gravel, mud, sand, clay, &c., the sweepings by water of the older rocks
+ground down by ages of wear and tear, we have the mammoth, mastodon,
+megatherium, and other great vegetable eaters, and lastly Man himself
+with his simple weapons of stone, bone, and horn—our early forefathers.
+
+You must always keep in mind that the greatest of these changes
+have taken place very slowly. Mountains have been raised, and whole
+continents have been sunk by movements so slow that if the hands of a
+clock went only once round the dial in a year the hand would go faster
+than these mountains have risen or the continents sunk. Almost always
+whenever there has been sudden and _violent_ action it has been near
+volcanoes or during earthquakes; but these things, terrible as they
+are to the people living near, disturb only a very small part of the
+surface, and such violence neither buried the coal beds nor raised
+the slate hills of Wales. Many of the small effects of the internal
+force of the earth have been sudden and violent, but the greatest and
+grandest have been slower than anything we can imagine.
+
+If this had not been so, we should not find fossil shells just as they
+sank quietly to the bottom of ancient seas, quite undisturbed. We
+should not find delicate ferns and insects with all their breakable
+parts perfectly preserved, and as lightly laid as if you had put
+them away carefully in a cabinet upon cotton wool. Yet many of these
+have sunk down hundreds of feet below the open air where they _must_
+have lived. We find the ripple marks of the waves on old sandstones,
+and even the prints of the feet of birds and animals as they walked
+upon that rock when it was soft sand, and the little pits made by
+rain-drops on the moist earth. All this speaks of stillness, and
+gentle movement, no violence. So slowly and softly have these rocks
+settled down, that we can read in them the history of the life that
+was. But if there had been any sudden and rough movement all these
+fossils might have been broken up and we should have had nothing but
+fragments, and the “puzzle of life” could never have been put together.
+Nature’s forces are immense, but they work slowly, irresistibly, and
+majestically.
+
+
+THE ICE AGE.
+
+We have seen now what the principal rocks are made of and the way
+in which their places have been changed by upheaval and depression.
+Water, as we know, has been at work and has done great things in _all_
+ages of the World’s history. I have called it “one of Nature’s most
+powerful tools,” and when we look at the quantity of chalk alone that
+there is in the world, and remember that this was all laid down in
+water, and perhaps a great part of its lime carried down by rivers to
+the seas where it settled to the bottom, after the corals and small
+shell-fish had worked it into their bodies, we are right in thinking
+water a great Magician indeed. Why, even so small a river as the Thames
+carries down to the sea every year as much dissolved earth as would
+make a good large hill; and what must such rivers as the Nile, the
+Amazon, the Mississippi, and the great Chinese rivers do! There must
+have been gigantic rivers, too, in the old times, or else it would have
+been impossible that the deep sandstone and slate beds could have been
+formed; for these are all laid down by the washing away of earth in
+water.
+
+Ice, which is only solid water, has also been a powerful tool in
+shaping the surface of the Earth, but it has not been _always_ at
+work as water has. Ice now covers only a comparatively small part of
+the globe near the north and south poles, and mountains like those in
+Switzerland; but by watching what ice is doing now in these places we
+are able to be certain that there has been a time when it covered
+Scotland, Cumberland, Wales, Sweden and Norway, and nearly all North
+America. In watching the great “rivers of ice,” called glaciers, in
+the Alps, for instance, we see that they slip down from the mountains
+slowly, creeping on year by year, and bringing with them pieces of
+rock and stones. We see also where they have melted that they have
+been grinding the rocks beneath them with their great weight, and have
+cut grooves into, and scraped and polished the hardest granite. The
+stones underneath the glaciers have been pressed so heavily upon the
+rocks that they have left deep marks, and we find the same kinds of
+marks and heaps of stones in many mountains where there are no glaciers
+now. There are other things too which convince us that a great ice
+sheet spread over almost the whole of Great Britain. When the huge
+icebergs break away from the frozen shores of Greenland and North
+America, they often have frozen into their ice large blocks of rock,
+sand, gravel, &c., and when they drift into the warmer seas of the
+south they melt, and of course these blocks or “boulders,” as they are
+called, sink to the bottom. Just the same kind of boulders are found
+in many parts of the world, where icebergs never come now, and as they
+are of a different rock from that on which they lie, they must have
+been brought there somehow. We naturally suppose then that they were
+brought by icebergs. Sometimes boulders of granite have been found thus
+among clay, many miles from where there are any granite rocks on the
+surface, and there can be no doubt that they were originally frozen
+into an iceberg, which floated away with them and when it melted left
+them so far from their native place. In many of the midland and eastern
+counties once floated these icebergs, dropping the stones and boulders
+which they brought away from the Welsh, Cumberland, and Scottish
+mountains.
+
+The climate of the earth must have been fearfully cold when our country
+was covered with ice, just as Greenland is now. Geologists suppose that
+there must have been more than one age of ice, and that between these
+ages the climate of the world was pretty much the same as at present,
+although it is certain that there were periods when England was much
+warmer, because many of the fossil plants could not have grown in a
+cold climate.
+
+You will want to know whether there were any land animals living during
+the ice periods. It is impossible to be quite certain, but it is most
+likely that the mammoth was living both before and during the _last_
+ice age, because its bones have been found among the earths brought
+down by the glaciers.
+
+I have said all you will be likely to remember at present about the
+nature of the different rocks, but it will help you to understand
+better how they have been laid one upon the other, and how they have
+been moved and broken by upheaval and subsidence, if you look at the
+drawings on page 51.
+
+
+DENUDATION.
+
+It has often happened that some of the harder and older rocks, like
+granite and slate, have pushed themselves through those earths lying
+above them, and then the sea or a great river has washed away all the
+earths from one side of the rock. The rain, too, falling for thousands
+of years, has swept them down into the valleys and mixed them together.
+This is called denudation, or “laying bare” the harder rocks by washing
+the softer ones away from them. Those beds of pebbles on the sea shore
+also have been battering against the rocks for ages and very gradually
+wearing them away, as you can see if you watch the stones being driven
+into and sucked out of holes and cracks by every wave. Thus, both
+the loose stones and the solid rocks get polished and ground away,
+and Nature is always destroying and making again by turns. If this
+destruction went on continually without any raising of the land to make
+up for it, the surface of the whole Earth would in time become level;
+but old sea beds are always being slowly raised above the water and
+prepared for the growth of plants and the habitation of animals.
+
+[Illustration: _Upheaval._]
+
+[Illustration: _Subsidence._]
+
+[Illustration: _Denudation._]
+
+If you watch the little rills of water on any rainy day, trickling
+down a hill, or the springs which bubble up at the foot of cliffs on
+the sea shore, you will see an example of denudation in a small way.
+The earth is washed off the surface here and there, and carried down
+and laid up in banks in some places, and the harder ground underneath
+is laid bare. Little beds of stones are collected in one place, and
+sticks and straws and such light things in another, and this is just
+what has been done on a large scale in mountain regions, all over the
+world for many centuries.
+
+In the uppermost sketch on page 51 you will see how the granite has
+been lifted up with the layers of other earth along its sides, and
+afterwards even layers have been deposited above; in the second there
+has been a great crack in the land, and a great mass of rock has
+subsided, and the hollow has become filled up in time with clay, and
+mould, and rich soil, so that some one has built a house and made a
+garden on it; in the third the river has cut a gorge in rocks which
+were once continuous from cliff to cliff, wearing away the softer
+earths more easily than the harder. If the Earth was cut into in
+different places we should find the rocks arranged in a very similar
+way to that in the three sketches.
+
+
+BOILING SPRINGS, ETC.
+
+In several different countries there are very strange sights, but
+scarcely anything is more astonishing than the fountains of boiling
+water which shoot up out of the ground. There are a good many of them
+not far from us, in Iceland, and many hundreds in Wyoming in America,
+and they are called “geysers.” Steam and boiling water, and sometimes
+mud, are thrown up by these natural fountains to a height of 200
+feet—as high as the top of the spire of a church. The water must come
+from a great depth in the ground—perhaps many thousand feet down—where
+the heat is intense. This water springing up with clouds of snow-white
+steam, and falling all round in showers, has a most beautiful
+appearance. These geysers now and then throw out very little water,
+just bubbling up above the ground, and then travellers boil eggs and
+chickens and such things in them, and have a pic-nic near them. It is
+impossible to say how long they have lasted, but we know from history
+that some have been spouting out water for at least 2,000 years, and
+how much longer no one can tell. They may have something to do with
+volcanoes, because water may have found its way to the heated interior
+of the earth, and being converted into steam, expands and causes an
+eruption.
+
+Now that we have some idea of the construction of the Earth, we must
+go on to the _life_ of the wonderful plants and creatures which have
+peopled it.
+
+
+
+
+_THE VEGETABLE PART._
+
+
+THE DAWN OF LIFE.
+
+The first beams of the rising sun, and the first grey light of the
+morning, tell us of the coming day; but we cannot even think of the
+dawn of that far-off day in the Earth’s history, when no voice of man
+or beast was heard, and no trees or grass covered it, without solemn
+wonder at the immense distance that day is from us. A thousand ages are
+in the sight of the Creator but as yesterday, and the period of man’s
+existence is only a moment compared to that of the lowly creatures
+which built up this World for him. In the first seas and on the land
+nothing was heard but the rushing of waters and the roaring of the
+fires of volcanoes.
+
+It is impossible to be quite certain whether the first living things
+were animals or plants; but I think it most likely that very simple
+plants grew first, and that very simple animals came after or with
+them. Among the first of these, or perhaps the very first, were some
+small animals called _Eozöon_, which means the “life-dawn animal,” and
+with them grew some simple plants. On the banks of the St. Lawrence
+river in Canada there is a great bed of rock called the Laurentian
+rocks, made almost entirely of the tiny remains of the “life-dawn
+animal,” which, when we look at them through a microscope, are found
+to possess nearly the same structure as some lowly organized shells
+living in the seas now. These rocks are found in many parts of the
+world besides—in Eastern America, Bavaria, Scotland, and Norway; and
+in some places their thickness has been estimated at thirty thousand
+feet, or nearly six miles, or one hundred times as thick as St. Paul’s
+Cathedral is high! These little creatures you see were at work over a
+great part of the Earth’s surface, and you may fancy how many thousands
+of thousands of years it took them to build up these rocks. The
+“life-dawn animal” is far older than the chalk-building foraminifera,
+and so far as we know it lived alone in its seas. There were none of
+the beautiful twisted _ammonite_ shell-fish, nor the shark-like fishes
+of the chalk seas. The eozöon was the only kind of living creature, the
+“lord of creation” for the time; and though storms raged in the seas it
+inhabited, the water was so deep that it lived on undisturbed. When you
+are able to use a microscope you will be able to see the traces left by
+these tiny animals in what is now hard stone.[1]
+
+Life began in a very small way: there were none of the great land
+animals we have now; but these seemingly insignificant builders were at
+work so long that they made the immense rocks I have told you of. But
+this is not all. About this time some very simple plants grew on the
+land, and were carried down by the rivers and formed deep beds. After
+a long time these became covered up with different earths and were
+turned into the substance called “black-lead,” which you use in drawing
+pencils. But this is not really lead; it is almost pure carbon—in
+fact, the oldest kind of coal—so old that it will not now burn like
+coal, and is entirely made up of fossil plants crushed out of shape, so
+that we cannot now trace their forms, as we can the plants of the coal.
+When then you next take up a drawing pencil it will be easy to remember
+that the black substance which marks the paper was once a living plant,
+now changed by heat and pressure into almost pure carbon. As the name
+eozöon has been given to the “life-dawn animal,” I will give this
+black-lead the name of _Eodendron_, or the “dawn-plant.”[2]
+
+Two very simple forms of life then occupied the earth and sea at the
+earliest time when anything at all was living, and strangely enough we
+use the dead bodies of both of them. We build houses of the rocks the
+eozöon laid down at the bottom of the sea, and the beautiful art of
+drawing is carried on with the carbon from the first plant life of the
+world—the eodendron.
+
+I must take you away presently to the coal, and sandstone, and chalk,
+and show you how plants and animals gradually increased in number and
+size, and fishes began to inhabit the seas, and all living things were
+slowly going on to greater perfection; for as time went on there was a
+steady progress from creatures like the eozöon, which had scarcely any
+power of moving about, to the active, quarrelsome and greedy things
+like crabs and lobsters which came after them, and the gigantic ferns
+of the coal beds. The peaceful “life-dawn animals” drew their food from
+the vegetable substances dissolved in the waters, though they perhaps
+also lived on animals still smaller than themselves; but, by-and-by,
+creatures, which must have been monsters to them, swarmed in the seas
+and devoured their smaller companions wholesale; and in time the Earth
+became very much the same as it is now, a place where the struggle for
+life is always going on. It is certain that animals have fed upon one
+another from the very beginning; but this is no doubt a wise law of the
+Creator to prevent them from increasing too fast, as they would do if
+all that were born lived, and none were destroyed.
+
+We know much less about the vegetation—the plants and grasses—of the
+early ages of the world than of the animals; because plants rot away
+faster than bones and shells, and, besides, are less likely to be found
+in places where they would be preserved. A dead tree might be eaten up
+entirely by insects, as the white ants eat up fallen trees in a short
+time in tropical countries, and what is left of them crumbles away to
+fine powder and mixes with the soil. Immense trees are thus devoured
+now by millions of tiny insects no longer than your thumb nail, in
+India and Australia. No such thing as a whole and perfect fossil tree
+with every twig and leaf has been found; but then the coal beds are
+really great forests which have been buried for so long a time that
+they have quite altered in appearance. Still, among these coal beds we
+often find the bark, fruit, stems, and branches of trees very much like
+firs, and ferns, and huge club-mosses, which have the same shape they
+had when living, though they are quite black, and burn exactly like
+coal.
+
+But there were plants long before the coal forests lived, and many
+fossil sea weeds are found in the old sandstones and limestones in
+Wales and other places.[3] The Old Red Sandstone, whose position you
+can see below the coal in the table of succession of formations, page
+42, does not give us many fossil plants, though fishes and shells are
+common. This rock is found in Scotland, Herefordshire, Devonshire, and
+Ireland, as well as other places, and is often more than 2,000 feet
+thick. It was not all formed in salt water we know, because many of the
+fossil fishes and shells it contains are fresh water kinds. It must
+all have been made of the pieces of still older rocks worn away by
+rivers and settled like a sediment in immense lakes, some of which were
+fresh water. Then, after the Old Red Sandstone, came a time when the
+limestones below the coal were laid down at the bottom of a vast sea,
+and here the remains of land plants are of course few. Then it seems
+there must have been a very long time when there were large continents
+all over the world raised above the seas, but not very much, and on
+these the forests grew which afterwards became coal fields. Until this
+time the plants had been mostly water weeds, reeds, rushes, and sea
+weeds, and it was not until England and Ireland became one continent,
+as they were once and covered with woods, that the great period of
+vegetation began.
+
+The growth of plants was then most wonderful; but although coal is
+found in many different parts of the world, it was not all formed at
+one time, and though it is plentiful in England and Wales, Scotland,
+Ireland, France, Belgium, Russia, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand,
+China, and Borneo, it is older in some countries than in others. It
+is fortunate, however, that this useful material was made in Nature’s
+workshop in so many different countries, or it would have to be carried
+from one to another. The coal forests were not the same trees as we
+have now—oaks, elms, ashes, limes, and so on. Most of them had rather
+hollow trunks and splendid waving tops like ferns and reeds, though
+there were some like our fir-trees.
+
+If you lie down in the long grass before it is mown, and look through
+the stalks and fancy yourself an inch high only, you will have some
+idea how the coal forest would have looked if you had lived then.
+But there were no human beings on the Earth then, and I do not think
+there were any large animals, at least none have been found in the
+coal itself, except in Switzerland, where a few bones of the mammoth
+(an ancient elephant) and of the rhinoceros have been discovered in
+the much newer beds of coal, and also those of a large reptile like a
+crocodile in the coal beds of Ohio in America.
+
+[Illustration: II.
+
+_Fossil Tree Fern._
+
+_Calamites._
+
+_Lepidodendron._
+
+_Different Kinds of Plants of the Coal Forests._]
+
+In such immense forests insects must certainly have been plentiful,
+and some of the fossil bodies of beetles, dragon-flies, and spiders,
+have been preserved, and a few tree lizards.[4] Of course the edges of
+the coal forests were washed here and there by the salt sea, and
+there must have been some fresh water rivers and ponds, for we find
+both fresh and salt water shells in these beds. It was almost dark in
+these forests, so thickly did the plants grow together. There were
+enormous club-mosses close together and as high as most houses, with
+their leaves interlaced making a complete network to shut out the sun.
+But the sun which shone on the forests was warm, and the air which went
+through them was soft, or they would not have grown so wonderfully.
+Indeed, there can be no doubt that the climate of northern regions was
+once much warmer than it is now. A thick bed of coal was discovered
+by the Arctic Expedition in 1875-6 actually within five hundred miles
+of the North Pole, where the ice on the sea is now thirty or forty
+feet thick![5] The forest which formed this coal could only have grown
+in a temperate climate, and there are no forests there now; it is so
+intensely cold they could not live. There must then have been a great
+change in the climate of the Arctic regions since that coal was living
+vegetation. The few plants and mosses which can live there now are of a
+very different and more hardy kind than those of the coal forests.
+
+If you look at the engraving facing page 64, you will see a drawing of
+one of the tree ferns with its delicate fronds which grew so abundantly
+in the coal forests, and there are many other plants, some like the
+common “mare’s tails,” or _calamites_, growing in shallow ponds and
+ditches now—only the “mare’s tails” or calamites of the coal forests
+were as high as poplars.[6] You can imagine what a splendid sight these
+forests of ferns, club-mosses, and “mare’s tails,” must have been, and
+what a multitude of beautiful insects and butterflies must have flitted
+about in them; but their frail bodies have almost all perished, so that
+we know very little of the animated creatures of the time.
+
+Besides several sorts of coal both soft and hard there is a substance
+called “lignite,” which is scarcely wood and scarcely coal, of a brown
+colour. In fact, lignite is wood almost turned to coal, and it has
+helped us to learn that coal was once living wood; but it is not nearly
+so old as the coal. Then again there is the beautiful substance called
+“jet” used for making bracelets. This is a kind of fossil gum or pitch
+dropped from the trees while they were growing, and, though different
+in colour, it is much the same in kind as amber. Amber is often found
+with flies, spiders, and small leaves imbedded in it. When this fossil
+resin or gum was flowing out of the ancient pine-trees, and was quite
+sticky, flies settled upon it and became entangled in it, and as more
+of the gum flowed out they became quite covered. Then the gum dropped
+from the tree and hardened, and it is now found in lumps on the shores
+of the Baltic Sea, and in beds of sand and clay with fossil wood. It is
+of a beautiful bright yellow colour, and beads for necklaces and other
+ornaments are made out of it.
+
+If we arrange the things we have been talking about in order, the
+oldest first, they would come thus: plumbago or black-lead—or, as I
+have called it, eodendron, “the life-dawn plant”—first, then hard coal,
+then soft coal, then lignite and jet, then bog oak and peat. But I
+must tell you something about bog oak and peat. In many of the swamps
+and bogs of the World the trunks of dead trees are found, which have
+become quite black and almost like lignite, because they have been
+buried so long. Thus, in the bogs of Ireland oak trees are often found,
+and they were most likely living when the reindeer inhabited Ireland.
+This old bogwood is made into beads for necklaces and other ornaments.
+Peat is a partly decayed vegetable substance, with beautiful little
+plants growing on its surface, and is really coal in its infancy. It
+is found all over the world more or less in wet places, and consists
+of the roots and stems of mosses and reeds, some of which are like
+the gigantic plants of the coal period, but very small in comparison.
+I have no doubt that in time some of these peat bogs may be turned
+into coal if they sink down and become covered with other earths, but
+at present they are all on the surface and so soft that they are
+dangerous to walk upon because one may sink in and be smothered.
+
+This, as far as we can trace it, is a sketch of the history of
+vegetable life on our Earth. We will go back to the coal for a moment
+and see what the animal life of that time was. The seas of the time of
+the coal forests were sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, and in the
+limestone rocks of the oceans which separated the great continents of
+that time there is a record of the inhabitants of the seas. The land
+plants were of more than 1,000 different kinds, and there were more
+than 200 kinds of fishes in the waters, and corals, shells, and small
+crab-like animals innumerable. The fishes were fellows with terrible
+teeth, and their bodies were covered with strong hard scales. One of
+these fish was thirty feet long, and there were others of considerable
+size. It is curious that the fishes of this time remind one of reptiles
+(lizards and crocodiles), just as the birds of a future time seem to
+have something of the reptile about them, as you will see by-and-by.
+
+I dare say you have remarked while reading that all the plants and
+animals of the early ages of the world seem to be made on a simple
+plan, and as the Earth grows older they become more perfect, and this
+is just what I want you to take notice of all through. The plants
+of the coal period, you have seen, were nothing like so perfect in
+construction, beautiful as they were, as the forest trees of the
+present time, neither were the animals so perfect as those living now.
+There has been _progress_, step by step, throughout the vegetable and
+animal creation; and, though many of the lower forms of the early ages
+exist now, there are others far superior to them which did not exist
+then: but all this will come in “The Animal Part.”
+
+About the middle of the Earth’s age came the wonderful period of
+vegetation which gave us our coal, and after that there was a great and
+busy time, when huge reptiles and reptile-like birds, and then true
+birds, made their appearance. But that belongs to the next part of the
+“puzzle of life.”
+
+If we look with astonishment at the coal forests, we may also well
+think of them with thankfulness. Here is the sunshine of past ages
+stored up for our use, and we bring it out again to warm ourselves,
+cook our food, make all our iron things, and drive our steam-engines!
+Can any romance be finer than this, that we are carried across to
+America and India and Australia in steam-boats driven by the “fossil
+sunlight” of ages and ages past, and whirled along at sixty miles an
+hour over iron rails by the same stored-up strength?
+
+If you doubt this, think of living trees. Do they not live by the air
+and sunlight? Will they grow without these? They spread their branches
+and leaves to gather the warmth and light from the air, and when they
+are cut down and dried, and you put a match to the wood, all the old
+warmth and light come out again; and we know that the coal is only
+fossil wood. Our Creator wastes nothing. Even when there were no people
+living to rejoice in the sun, He thought of those people who _should_
+come in time, and not one of the fiery rays of the fierce sun was lost.
+These mighty forests were sent to gather it, and when they had died
+down they sank below the surface and were covered from the air, that
+none of their light or heat should escape.
+
+In such forests it is strange that there were no birds, especially as
+there were swarms of insects, and no doubt abundance of worms. But no
+bone of bird or any trace of feathered songster of these lovely groves
+has yet been found. Little lizards chased flies and beetles up and down
+the stems of the club-mosses and ferns, and larger reptiles lurked in
+the long damp grass under the shade. The pools and ponds were filled
+with curious fishes, and reefs of beautiful white coral fringed all the
+shores of the seas.
+
+But the Earth was not fit for the habitation of man. The fruits of the
+trees were not such as he could have eaten, and their wood was not hard
+enough to build houses of. Still it was being got ready for him, and
+not a leaf waved uselessly in the bright, warm air, and not a tree fell
+to the ground, but it was to be turned into coal, and to come forth
+again one day a hard black lump, without any of its former beauty, but
+to give back the light and heat it had gathered from the sun ages and
+ages ago.
+
+Many periods in the Earth’s history have passed since the coal period,
+and in every one of these the trees have been increasing in perfection,
+though there have never since been such great numbers of a few kinds
+growing. When we come to the more lately formed beds of earth we begin
+to find the cypress, willow, ash, oak, elm, and other forest trees
+which are living now. The trunks of these trees, blackened by age, lie
+buried in peat bogs and swamps all over Europe. The mighty Mississippi
+river brings down immense quantities of dead trees, and as these sink
+to the bottom near its mouth they are forming future coal beds. Along
+the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, too, and stretching far away under
+the German Ocean, is an old English forest. In some places the trunks
+of the buried trees may be seen standing upright just where they grew.
+The nets of the fishermen are continually bringing up pieces of wood,
+roots, and seeds; and when the sea washes away the soft cliffs here the
+bones, teeth, and tusks of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and
+other large animals which inhabited this forest, may be seen in great
+numbers.
+
+Down below the waves of ocean have these woods sunk with all their once
+living creatures, and though you may suppose that it must have been
+very long ago that they grew, they are of the same kind as those which
+now make the hills and valleys of England beautiful.
+
+Sometimes a forest must sink very fast, for travellers have told us how
+they have sailed on rivers and lakes over the tops of sunken trees,
+and, looking down into the clear water, have seen the branches waving
+below—tall trees standing upright at the bottom, and the boats sailing
+over their tops!
+
+We must now pass on to the living creatures which peopled the Earth,
+and their story can be told with more certainty than that of the
+perishable plants which clothed the surface of the ground, and, while
+they rendered it beautiful, also served as food and shelter for
+innumerable animals, and have become so useful to us as coal, lignite,
+black-lead, and other productions of ancient forests.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Specimen in Table-case 15, Room V., North Gallery British Museum.
+
+[2] The name _Eophyton_ has also been suggested for the earliest
+vegetable forms.
+
+[3] Divisions A and B of Case 1, Room I., North Gallery, contain some
+of the oldest known fossil plants.
+
+[4] Fossil insects in Table-case No. 14, Room V.
+
+[5] In 81° 44′ N. latitude.
+
+[6] Specimens of plants from the coal in Cases No. 2, 3, 4, in Room I.
+
+
+
+
+_THE ANIMAL PART._
+
+
+We must now go back and collect the smaller pieces of “the puzzle”
+which make up the animal part. The great periods of vegetation ended in
+our country with the coal forests, and there has been no such wonderful
+growth of plants since the time when the New Red Sandstone, lying above
+the coal, was formed; though no doubt trees and plants have since
+flourished, as they do now on the Earth, but not in such quantities as
+during the coal period.
+
+We remember that the eozöon, “the life-dawn animal,” is the oldest
+animal we know of, and that it lived so long ago as when the Laurentian
+rocks were laid down at the bottom of the seas of that time; then in
+later rocks we find the burrows of sea worms in the stone, and later
+still simple shells with two valves like the common mussel, and other
+animals of a simple kind, like the corals, sponges, and star-fishes
+which exist now. There must have been millions of these creatures in
+the older limestone seas, for the rocks are almost entirely composed
+of their fossil shells and bodies. By-and-by a rather superior animal
+inhabited the seas of Wales, called a trilobite, of which you will see
+a picture on the opposite page. This curious animal was of the same
+family as the shrimps and prawns, but much larger, and he must have
+been a giant among the others. None of these animals had any bones, you
+must understand; but they had a hard shelly covering to support their
+soft bodies inside, and no doubt the trilobites were able to swim about
+very fast.[7]
+
+[Illustration: III.
+
+_Trilobite._]
+
+What I want you to take notice of now is the _progress_ that has been
+going on from the almost motionless eozöon to the shell-fish and
+star-fish, which could crawl along the bottom of the sea and over the
+rocks, to this active, quick-moving trilobite, with his great paddles.
+Then the next step is a very great one, when we come to animals with
+bones. The first of these are fishes. All the other bones are joined to
+the backbone, therefore all animals with bones are called _vertebrata_,
+which is a Latin word meaning having a backbone with joints. Now
+animals with bones are plainly superior to those with only shells, and
+when we find fishes among the rocks of Wales and Devonshire we know
+that we are beginning to pick up some important pieces of the “puzzle
+of life.” These fishes were most of them related to the sturgeon, and
+their bones and teeth are found in great quantities in the Old Red
+Sandstone rocks, just below the coal.[8]
+
+It is not until we get above the coal into the oolite or egg-stone
+rocks that still larger and altogether superior animals, both of sea
+and land, began to increase, and this is called
+
+
+THE AGE OF REPTILES.
+
+This has been called the reptile age because there were such numbers
+of animals like crocodiles, lizards, and tortoises (which are all
+reptiles), and some of them were of immense size. For instance, there
+was a huge creature something like a frog, but as large as a Shetland
+pony, called the _Labyrinthodon_, with a great many curious teeth, and
+this animal has left footprints in the New Red Sandstone which have
+been dried and buried, we can’t tell how long, and there are the cracks
+made by the sun drying the place he walked over when that was soft
+earth. There is a drawing of some of these footsteps in the picture on
+the next page, and there are also the footprints of a large bird, and
+you can see where he walked over the soft earth and made a long line of
+footmarks; and if you look at the footprints of birds on the snow or
+mud now you will notice marks just like these. Then there is another
+picture of a single footprint of a large bird, and all those round dots
+are where rain-drops fell and left their marks in the soft earth.
+
+[Illustration: IV.
+
+(1) _Footprints of Labyrinthodon._
+
+(3) _Footprints of Birds_, (2) _with marks of Rain-drops_.]
+
+I dare say you will wonder how it is that these footprints have not
+disappeared. Well, when the animals and birds that made them had
+gone the marks became filled with dry sand, no doubt blown in by the
+wind, and then the mud dried hard, and at last it became covered with
+other earths and sank slowly down, just as the coal forests had done
+before, and remained there until we dug it up with these tracks of
+the birds and animals that lived then. Some of these birds must have
+been larger than any living now, because their footmarks are so long.
+None of their bones have been found yet, I believe, but plenty of the
+teeth and some bones of the labyrinthodon have. The real footmarks, of
+course, are very large, though they are small in the picture.[9]
+
+In the great beds of Lias there are many other strange animals, and
+among them are two great fish-lizards called the _Ichthyosaurus_
+and _Plesiosaurus_. Both of these lived in the water and perhaps
+came on land sometimes, and it is certain that they must have been
+very ferocious creatures, from their great size and sharp teeth. The
+plesiosaurus would be able to raise his long neck above the water and
+snap at some of those curious birds rather like bats which lived at the
+time, and of which I shall have something to say presently. Some of
+these fish-lizards were as large as whales, and their bodies have been
+so beautifully preserved in the limestone rocks that we can actually
+sometimes find in their stomachs the food they lived on.
+
+[Illustration: V.
+
+_Ichthyosaurus._
+
+_Plesiosaurus._
+
+FISH-REPTILES.]
+
+Now we have got to a higher order of creation still, these
+fish-lizards, and they remind one of the next step in progress—birds.
+You know that all birds lay eggs, so do almost all reptiles, such as
+crocodiles, lizards, and most snakes, so that they are alike in this.
+Then the plesiosaurus with his long neck reminds us of such birds as
+the heron and the swan, but he is altogether more like a reptile than
+either a fish or a bird. There were also huge land reptiles, which
+lived in the forests of the time, and must have been a terror to the
+smaller animals. From the bones of one of these which have been found
+in the oolite clays near Weymouth in Dorsetshire (the _Cetiosaurus_),
+we see that it must have been nearly as large as an elephant, and
+there are others called the _Megalosaurus_, _Dinosaurus_, &c. All these
+names end with _saurus_, a name taken from the Greek word meaning
+lizard; and you will see now why the oolite, or “Jurassic”[10] age,
+as it is sometimes called, is well named the “reptile age,” for these
+creatures swarmed on the land and in the sea. Specimens of these you
+can see for yourselves in the cases on the walls of the third room in
+the North Gallery of the British Museum, where all the fossils are
+collected.
+
+But still more extraordinary animals than any of these lived at the
+time, and we can scarcely tell whether they were birds or reptiles, as
+they were something like both, but I suppose we must call them flying
+reptiles, and they are the nearest approach to birds that had yet
+existed. These creatures are called _Pterodactyles_, from two Greek
+words which mean “wing-fingered.” Suppose the little fingers of both
+your hands were a yard longer than the others, and suppose a thick
+leathery skin was stretched from the tips of your long little fingers
+to each of your feet, you would have wings something like a pterodactyl
+and also something like the wings of a bat. But the pterodactyl had a
+long neck and a long beak-like mouth, full of long sharp pointed teeth.
+It could not walk much I think, but it could hang itself up by its hind
+limbs to a tree or rock, head downwards like a bat, and must have been
+able to fly very strongly, with its huge leathery wings, but it had no
+feathers. There were swarms of these curious half lizard half bird-like
+animals on the land, and they were of all sizes, some no bigger than a
+crow, and some as large as the albatross, measuring twelve feet across
+their outstretched wings. Their skeletons are some of the commonest
+fossils in the oolite rocks, all through the great reptile age.[11]
+
+Now you see we have come to a reptile that can fly, but, excepting for
+its wings and some of its bones, more like a crocodile than a bird. A
+little further on we find another curious animal in the oolite rocks,
+which is much more like a true bird than the pterodactyl, because it
+had feathered wings. It is called the _Archæopteryx_, which means
+“ancient wing,” and I have given a picture of it on the same page as
+the pterodactyl, so that you may compare them together. The blade-bone
+and “merry-thought” of this creature were exactly like those of a bird,
+and so were the feet and legs, which would enable it to walk easily, or
+perch on the branch of a tree, but the tail was long and many-jointed
+like that of a lizard, with a fan of feathers growing on each side
+of it, and short feathered wings. Then it most likely had teeth like
+a lizard, and there were short claws at the bend of the wings. This
+bird-reptile was about the size of a crow, and was the first we know of
+with feathers, and the limestone rock has preserved it most beautifully
+through all the long ages which have passed since it flitted over the
+land of the oolite period.[12] Later still than these, there lived in
+America, about the time the chalk was formed in England, two strange
+birds called _Hesperornis_ and _Ichthyornis_, both of which had teeth
+in the jaws. The former was an immense fellow like the penguin, with
+short wings, and the latter was about the size of a pigeon with large
+feathered wings.
+
+They are finding more of these curious creatures every now and then in
+America. Some are without teeth, and have a horny bill like that of a
+real bird, and in other ways more nearly resemble living birds; still
+they have not lost the appearance of reptiles in their principal bones.
+
+[Illustration: VI.
+
+_Pterodactyl_ (_Wing-finger_).
+
+_Archæopteryx_ (_Ancient-wing_).]
+
+I have been particular in describing some of these fish-lizards
+and bird-reptiles; because they, or their near relations, were the
+principal inhabitants of land and sea from the end of the coal period
+to the end of the chalk, though there were of course swarms of fishes
+and shell-fish; but I ought to tell you that even so early as this
+there was at least one animal known which suckled its young ones, and
+this was a small insect-eating creature not larger than a rat, of the
+same family (called _Marsupial_) as the kangaroo of Australia, which
+carries its young ones in a pocket or pouch in its skin.
+
+All this time we have been hunting for parts of “the puzzle” in those
+ancient oolite rocks between the coal and the chalk, and those we
+have found are very important. We have seen the slow progress from
+simple sea shells to simple fishes, and then onwards to fish-lizards
+and bird-reptiles with one little marsupial animal, of a far higher
+kind, in between, as if to tell us beforehand what more complete and
+perfect animals we might expect by-and-by. After the fishes we have
+found fish-lizards, then bird-reptiles with wings, but no feathers, and
+later still a bird-reptile with wing and tail feathers. How different
+the life of the Earth was at the end of the “reptile age” of the oolite
+rocks, to the far back Laurentian time when one little creature, our
+old friend eozöon, alone held possession of the seas!
+
+
+THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD.
+
+Now let us look into the rocks next above, and see what is to be found
+there. We have arrived in the Cretaceous period, or time when the
+chalk was formed.[13] You remember I told you you might call this
+“foraminifera earth” because so much of it was made up of the shells
+of these tiny animals, thousands of which could be put into a thimble.
+Whenever you make a mark with a piece of drawing chalk you rub off a
+number of them, and you will see what pretty little creatures they
+were if you look at the drawings of some of them on the next page as
+they are seen under the microscope, magnified thousands of times their
+natural size; but there are others of different shapes. On the same
+page too there is a handsome shell, called an ammonite, and of its real
+size, common in chalk rocks. The seas of the time must have been very
+deep as I have explained before, and the chalk contains numbers of
+bones of fishes everywhere, and many of the remains of the reptile-like
+creatures of the time before. Corals, sea-urchins, crabs, &c.,
+abounded, and as you can scarcely ever see chalk without immense flint
+stones in it, you may suppose what millions of sponges lived on the
+rocks, for these flints are partly made up of their fossil bodies.[14]
+Another Cretaceous period is beginning now at the bottom of the
+Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, where it is deep enough to cover the Alps,
+for these little foraminifera are living on the surface in countless
+millions, and day by day their fossil shells are settling down to the
+bottom and forming a soft grey mud, full of the carbonate of lime like
+chalk. The climate of the Cretaceous age was mild and pleasant, as we
+know from the kind of animals in the seas. Slowly the water began to
+get shallower and shallower by the upheaval of the bed, and at last the
+bottom of this mighty chalk ocean came up to the light and sun, to be
+covered in some places with the drift and worn particles of older rocks
+swept over it by rivers, and to receive new plants and new animals, and
+in some places to remain almost bare, as it is on the downs of Brighton.
+
+[Illustration: VII.
+
+FOSSILS OF THE CHALK.
+
+  1 _Ammonite._
+  2 3 4 _Foraminifera_ (_Chalk-builders_).]
+
+Now we take one more step upwards into almost a new world—the world on
+which mighty animals lived, and which man came to share with them.
+
+
+THE TERTIARY PERIOD.
+
+The reign of the reptiles is now passed. The ichthyosaurus and
+pterodactyl no longer inhabited the seas and continents. Great changes
+had taken place in the shape of the land. A river larger than the Rhine
+swept majestically through England from the borders of Wales right out
+into the German Ocean, and its banks were covered with forests and
+marshes, where the new animals which had come to take possession of
+the earth lived and moved and had their being. The mountains of the
+Pyrenees were raised above the sea, and parts of Surrey and Sussex
+appeared too. It was most likely in the early part of the Tertiary
+period that the stone was formed of which almost all Paris is built.
+Fancy a great city built of the shells of dead animals! One can
+scarcely believe it: but the microscope lets us into this secret of
+Nature. If we take a piece of this stone and examine it in a powerful
+microscope we see that it is made almost entirely of tiny shells, so
+small that myriads of them could be packed in a nut-shell. How long
+must they have been working to make all the stone beds of which Paris
+is built? We cannot measure the time, we can only know it must have
+been enormous!
+
+All kinds of animals both of sea and land increased in numbers and
+perfection. The ammonites were dead, but their even more beautiful
+relation, the nautilus, was living as it is now. The trilobite was
+gone, but his next relation, the lobster and crab, appeared. Fishes
+abounded. Whales which suckle their young ones appeared, and the
+numbers of vertebrata, or animals with backbones, were more numerous
+than they had ever been before. Just as animals with bones are more
+perfect than those with only skins or shells, so animals which suckle
+their young ones are more perfect than those which only lay eggs.
+Thus the whale is a more perfect animal than the shark, though both
+inhabit the water; and elephants and even rats and mice more perfect
+still; and because there were so many of these “sucklers,” or mammalia
+as they are called, in the Tertiary period, we know that all living
+creatures were becoming more perfect. It will interest you too to learn
+that monkeys began to appear now, and that they were common in France,
+while at the present time the only part of Europe where they are to be
+found is on the rock of Gibraltar.
+
+But I want particularly to tell you of the giant animals—the Mammoth,
+Mastodon, Megatherium, Dinotherium, and others, and first let us see
+what the mammoth was like.
+
+In former times, when people accidentally found the bones of these
+animals, they actually thought they had belonged to giant _men_, and
+we can scarcely wonder at that: but we know better. If only one small
+bone is shown to Professor Owen or Professor Huxley, he can tell at
+once whether it belonged to a man or an animal, a fish or a bird, and
+very often the particular animal too. Well, the bones of the mammoth
+were found in the north of Russia on the banks of the river Lena in
+1800: but the Russians knew of them before that, and the name they
+gave the animal means “earth,” because they supposed it burrowed in the
+earth like a mole. This one is now in the Museum at St. Petersburg, and
+its brownish coat and long black hairs, and even the hoofs and some of
+the flesh, can be distinctly seen. The drawing in the frontispiece is
+taken from it. It was strange that any people could have supposed that
+this huge creature, larger than an elephant and with great curved tusks
+ten feet long and weighing 160 lbs., could have got underground of its
+own accord: but that was the only way in which they could account for
+finding it buried in the earth on the banks of the rivers. Look at
+the picture in the frontispiece; what a splendid animal he was, this
+old elephant; larger and stronger than any living elephants! Immense
+quantities of their bones are found in Siberia, and the tusks and teeth
+are brought in ship-loads to England, where they are sold for their
+ivory. Their skeletons have been found in most countries of Europe, in
+many parts of Asia, and in North America, and these animals must have
+been common at one time near London, for their bones have been dug up
+in the brick earth at Ilford in Essex and other places near the Thames.
+There is a skull with tusks set up with iron supports in the British
+Museum.[15]
+
+There was besides another animal very much like this called the
+Mastodon; but it had tusks in the lower jaws as well as the upper,
+four in all, and the lower tusks dropped out when the animal grew old.
+The whole skeleton of one of these is also put up in the Museum, which
+you ought to go and see.[16] Mastodons’ bones have been discovered in
+England and other parts of Europe, and in North and South America and
+India, so that they were spread pretty well all over the world. They
+had very curious pointed teeth rather like a lot of fir cones piled
+together, not flat grinders like those of the mammoth and all living
+elephants, and perhaps they fed upon fruits and nuts, and boughs, as
+I do not think they could have managed well to chew grass and leaves
+with such pointed teeth. The teeth in their old dead jaws are still
+beautifully white and look like china. Both the mammoth and the
+mastodon had long trunks of course, and they must have been grand
+looking creatures marching about in the English forests. We should be
+very much startled if we were to meet one of them now in an English
+wood: but there is no chance of that, they have all passed away, and
+the only relations they have living are the elephants of Africa and
+Asia.
+
+During this Tertiary period, or at least the early part of it, besides
+the mammoth and mastodon, the hippopotamus and rhinoceros were
+plentiful about the Thames. Those same Ilford marshes in Essex have
+been a complete storehouse of the remains of these animals. The bones
+of a hundred different mammoths and eighty rhinoceroses have been dug
+up lately from the damp, black soil, as well as many belonging to the
+hippopotamus, and we can have no doubt that all the swamps along the
+north side of the river were inhabited by large herds of these huge
+beasts, or so many of their skeletons could not have been collected in
+one place. It is very likely they were overtaken in a flood of the
+river and drowned, and their bodies sank down in the mud of the river
+bank: but anyhow, there they are to tell us that they lived and died
+almost within sight of the Tower of London, if it had been built then,
+as of course it was not.
+
+[Illustration: VIII.
+
+_Gigantic Irish Stag_ (_Cervus Megaceros_).]
+
+Long long ago too, before there was a single brick where London stands,
+and when the few human beings who were living were obliged to hide
+themselves in caves, great lions might have been heard roaring at night
+in the forests of the Thames Valley. The bones of this lion have been
+found in many different parts of England, and a terrible fellow he
+must have been, for some of his canine teeth (the long sharp teeth in
+cats and dogs) were more than six inches long. Indeed they were like
+small swords, and this is why he has been called the “sabre-toothed”
+lion. There were also bears, like the great grisly bear of America, and
+leopards, hyenas, and wolves, and besides two kinds of ox far larger
+than those we have now. But one of the handsomest animals was the great
+Irish stag. When standing upright the top of his horns would be as
+high as two tall men. He was indeed a fine fellow with his immense
+spreading antlers. The deer in our parks would look dwarfs beside him.
+He inhabited both England and Ireland: but, being found more often in
+Ireland, he has got the name of the _Irish_ stag. As many as thirty of
+the skeletons of these stags have been found together under a bog in
+Ireland, and in some of the bones the marrow is still preserved, and
+they burn well. Fences have been made of these bones in Ireland, and
+when the people of a small village in the county of Antrim heard of the
+battle of Waterloo they made a great bonfire of the bones and horns
+of the Irish stag to rejoice over the victory. I dare say these stags
+were hunted by wolves, and perhaps driven on to the ice of ancient
+lakes, where they broke through and got drowned, for so many of their
+skeletons are found together. I could not pass this magnificent stag by
+without giving you a picture of him.[17] He was a much nobler looking
+animal than the reindeer, which lived along with him at the time in
+England, and from his appearance I should say he was a swift runner and
+great fighter. Some antlers have been found locked together, just as
+these stags died in mortal combat, and I never see Sir Edwin Landseer’s
+beautiful picture of two red-deer stags fighting without thinking what
+a grand sight it would have been to see two of these great Irish stags
+rushing at each other with their powerful horns.
+
+Not one of those animals is living now, and none of them is mentioned
+in any history or tradition whatever, and though there is no doubt that
+men living in Europe saw the mammoth alive (as you will find in the
+next chapter), they knew of no kind of writing in which to tell us of
+them; these fossils are the only records left, but they speak plainly
+enough of the time when England and the whole of Europe were inhabited
+by these races of huge animals.
+
+[Illustration: IX.
+
+_The Megatherium._]
+
+Now I must carry you away to South America, where there are more
+wonders. If I were to tell you of all the singular monsters people
+have found in the beds of the rivers there it would make a book of
+itself. You know what large rivers there are in that country, and how
+they run for thousands of miles through almost flat plains called
+“Pampas.” Well, these rivers have often changed their beds by cutting
+new channels in the soft soil. The old dry beds of the rivers are
+the burying-places of some most curious animals, but I have not room
+to tell you about more than one of them at present. He is called the
+_Megatherium_, which means “great beast.” His size and strength were
+enormous. The largest hippopotamus looks small by his side. His leg
+bones are bigger than your body. He was more like the sloth than any
+other living animal, but he could not climb. He stood on those huge,
+broad hind feet, with his strong tail as a sort of third leg, and tore
+down the branches of the trees to feed on, or even rooted them up to
+get at the leaves. Standing by his skeleton in the British Museum[18]
+one feels quite a shrimp, and he looks strong enough to walk away
+comfortably with an elephant on his back.
+
+Another immense animal inhabited South America at the time, which
+geologists have called _Dinotherium_, or “dreadful beast.”[19] He was a
+relation of the mastodon, but his tusks were very curious. Instead of
+being in the upper jaw and turned upwards they stuck out from the lower
+jaw and curved downwards, giving him a very odd appearance. He most
+probably had a trunk like the mammoth or mastodon, but perhaps not so
+long. All these of course were vegetable feeders.
+
+The Tertiary period is so remarkable for the numbers of animals more
+or less related to elephants and spread all over the world, that we
+might almost call it the “elephant age,” as the oolite has been named
+the “reptile age.” These elephantine animals abounded in Europe, Asia,
+and North and South America, and though none of this kind have yet been
+found in Australia and Africa, I cannot help thinking they will be
+discovered in Africa at all events, for there is no doubt that Africa
+and Europe were once joined.
+
+Australia you know possesses that animal so unlike all others that when
+we first see it we are quite astonished—the kangaroo. The bones of a
+huge fossil kangaroo have been found in Australia which must have stood
+fourteen or fifteen feet high I should think when on its hind legs, or
+more than twice as large as any living now.[20] Then there were giant
+birds in New Zealand (something like the ostrich) called _dinornis_ or
+“dreadful bird.” These fellows had no wings, and they must have been
+very much taller than the ostrich or emu. To look at their leg bones
+you would think they were the bones of oxen instead of birds, they are
+so immensely thick and strong. I do not think any of these are living
+now, because they have been sought for carefully, and none of the
+natives even can say that they have seen one. But their skeletons are
+common in the surface earth, and their bones, cracked to get the marrow
+out of them, are often dug out of the heaps of refuse collected about
+ancient cooking places. So that they were used for food, and perhaps
+they have not been extinct—that is to say, died out—more than a few
+hundred years; and this is more likely because feathers are sometimes
+attached to the remains, and undecayed sinews on the feet. A human
+skeleton has been found in a grave in New Zealand, too, with the egg
+of one between its arms, and little piles of pebbles are often seen
+among their bones, where the stomach would be, which the bird swallowed
+to digest its food, just as many birds do now. The natives called
+it the Moa, and they have some traditions about it, and, all things
+considered, it is probably one of the most recent fossil animals, and
+that is the reason why I have left it to the last.[21]
+
+Now I dare say you will wish to know when the animals living now took
+the place of those I have described, and which have all passed away.
+This cannot be told with certainty, but you will see in the “Human
+Part” that Men were living when the mammoth, mastodon, and some other
+extinct animals, inhabited the Earth, and that the reindeer, ox, bear,
+wolf, hyena, &c., have survived to the present day.
+
+Throughout these immense periods of time there are gaps which we cannot
+yet fill up. No one can yet say, for instance, when the last of the
+mammoths disappeared, and the first of their near relations, the Indian
+and African elephants, took their place. These are the missing parts
+of “the puzzle of life” which you may perhaps one of these days find
+when you come to study the subject, and when you have learned all that
+is known at present. But you may be sure of this, that throughout all
+time there has been _progress_, the lower forms of animal life have
+been followed by more perfect forms as the Earth grew older. It is true
+the lower forms of life have not all died out. These imperfect animals
+have run through all the ages—the chalk builder of the Cretaceous age
+lives in the ocean now—and there are many other simple animals which
+lived in Old Red Sandstone times, and are not extinct yet, but wherever
+a superior kind of animal has passed away another more perfect has
+taken its place. This will be seen at once if we compare the “Reptile
+Age” with the Tertiary. The great ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and
+pterodactyl are gone, but now we have the more perfect crocodiles
+and birds. The mammoth is gone, but we have the elephant. There are
+no giant mosses or towering tree ferns, but our forest trees are more
+perfect and more varied. The plants which formed the coal forests and
+once clothed the Earth with beauty have dwindled away to the lowly
+forms which we must stoop to examine in swamps, and these humble plants
+are all the surviving relatives of their once noble family. The lordly
+oaks and elms, stronger, and even more lovely in the sweet drapery of
+their foliage, and much better fitted for our use, have succeeded all
+those soft-stemmed plants which grew so fast and were the best possible
+kind for forming coal.
+
+When you are able to study what is called comparative anatomy you will
+see how wonderful the _plan_ of creation is, and how beautifully it
+has been worked out by its great Designer. You will see in the bones
+of the reptiles of the oolite rocks a prophecy as it were of the birds
+and animals which were to come. What could be more prophetic of animals
+with the power of perfect flight than the leather-winged pterodactyl,
+half lizard and half bird? In some of these animals you will see bones
+only half formed, and useless to that creature, which were brought to
+perfection in later times, and became the most important part of the
+body.
+
+It is very difficult for me to make all this plain to you, but if you
+are really interested in it you will go to a museum where the fossils
+are collected, and then I am very much mistaken if you do not find a
+new and strange world opened to you.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Numerous specimens in Case No. 7, Room V.
+
+[8] Specimens of fossil fishes from various rocks in Wall-case No. 1,
+Room II.
+
+[9] See examples in the large Wall-cases in Rooms I., II., and III.,
+North Gallery.
+
+[10] So called because the mountain chain of the Jura Alps was raised
+during this period.
+
+[11] Several specimens in Room III., and in Table-case No. 16, Room IV.
+
+[12] Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several specimens, imperfect.
+
+[13] From the Latin word “creta,” meaning chalk.
+
+[14] Ammonites in the Table-cases in Rooms V. and VI. For enlarged
+models of foraminifera, see Case No. 15 in Room V.
+
+[15] Room VI., North Gallery.
+
+[16] In the same room.
+
+[17] Complete specimens of male and female in the middle of Room V.
+
+[18] Room VI.
+
+[19] Head and tusks in Wall-case No. 2, Room VI.
+
+[20] Skull in Wall-case No. 1, Room VI.
+
+[21] Several specimens in Wall-case No. 11, Room III.
+
+
+
+
+_THE HUMAN PART._
+
+
+The history of the human race is of course even more interesting than
+that of the plants and animals which lived so long before man and
+prepared the way for him, because man is the “crown of creation.”
+
+When first placed on this Earth he must have been but little superior
+to the animals in his outward life, though he had very different powers
+within him. He could gather the fruits of the Earth like them, and
+perhaps used some of the smaller creatures as food, but he could do
+little more. He scarcely knew that he possessed the faculties which
+would in time make him lord of the Earth and the creatures inhabiting
+it. By slow and painful experience he was to gather those stores of
+knowledge that were to enable him to overcome difficulties, to provide
+him with shelter from the weather and protection from dangerous
+animals, give increasing comfort and power, and set him so far above
+all other created things. He found plants and animals for his use, and
+the dwellings in caves and holes ready made by Nature. He could neither
+build houses nor make weapons. The first weapon he ever used probably
+was a stone, which he could throw at small animals. Then he would find
+out that long, sharp-pointed sticks could be thrown like spears, and
+he also found that a long pliant piece of wood when bent would fly
+back, and in this he would see a means of throwing smaller pointed
+sticks like arrows, and I dare say the discovery of the way of making
+a bow with a string of twisted animal skin was a great invention, and
+it certainly would be a very valuable one. Many generations must have
+passed away before he got even as far as this. It is very easy for us,
+who see bows and arrows from our childhood, to understand their use at
+once: but the first human inhabitants of the world had to find them out
+for themselves. They began with _no_ knowledge at all. The beasts of
+the field and the fruits of the Earth were given them, but they could
+MAKE nothing. They had not even the natural covering of hair, or wool,
+or feathers, which animals and birds have, and they must first have
+clothed themselves with skins of these. The wants of their daily life
+were so great that they had no time to think of anything else, but
+when it became easier to satisfy these bodily wants their minds turned
+to other things. They must have seen that when the seeds and fruits
+of plants fall upon the ground they grow and produce the same kind of
+plant, but they did not at first think of gathering a great number of
+these seeds and sowing them in one place and making a garden. They
+could wander about and gather all they needed as they became ripe, for
+there were few people then. Their life was like that of the lilies of
+the field, they “toiled not neither did they spin,” as Christ says of
+the flowers, but when they began to increase in number something more
+was wanted. People began to feel something within them which we call
+“intellect,” and this must be satisfied. It was not enough to live as
+if they were no nobler than the animals. Something stirred in their
+minds which told them they must not stand still.
+
+The Creator has made both us and the wood and stone and metals, and
+has given to us the power to make other things out of them. Thus we
+are nearer to Him in power than any of the animals who cannot change
+the rough materials into other forms. We admire the simple and really
+beautiful nest of the bird, but we feel that our power is greater
+when we consider our splendid buildings and steam-engines, our ships,
+and our many conquests over difficulties. But if we did not use these
+greater powers of mind and hand well, we should find them grow weaker
+and weaker until we might almost lose them.
+
+You may easily suppose that there was a time when men could not write,
+and there were no books of any kind, nor any other means of exchanging
+thoughts except through spoken language. The earliest histories about
+the human race always speak of men who lived before those histories
+were written. We have nothing about the earliest men written by
+_themselves_. It is always someone else who writes of them, referring
+to their deeds, and to events which happened long before.
+
+The art of writing has grown up gradually and very slowly, for when the
+inhabitants of the Earth became numerous they felt the need of some
+way of expressing themselves to those at a distance from them, and for
+making a record of things that happened and might be forgotten. Some
+of the earliest means of writing were by pictures, like the picture
+writings of Mexico[22] found by the Spanish conquerors, and something
+of the same kind is even now used by the Chinese and Japanese. Their
+writing is made up partly of pictures and partly of queer signs which
+stand for the names of things, as you know if you have ever seen
+one of their books. One of the oldest forms of writing known is the
+hieroglyphic, which is said to have been first used by the Egyptians
+about 2,100 years before Christ, and another is the arrow-shaped
+writing of the Assyrians. These were cut on stone and metal tablets,
+and most of them are the histories of their kings. But there are some
+writings on stone in India which are thought to be older still. The
+Egyptians made great progress in writing afterwards when _papyrus_
+was invented.[23] This is a kind of paper made from a reed which grows
+abundantly in the river Nile, and many of these papyrus writings are
+preserved in the British Museum, as well as the writings on stone of
+the Egyptians and Assyrians, and learned men have spelled out a great
+deal of the history of these nations from them, though the language is
+quite different from any spoken or written now.
+
+Picture writing was most likely one of the earliest inventions in this
+way: but it was so troublesome that signs were used to express the same
+things as the picture. For instance, suppose a history of a king was to
+be written. The word “king” would be shown by something he always wore,
+such as his crown, and this sign would become more simple until at last
+it might not be anything like a crown; but it would be remembered that
+the sign stood for a king all the same. The first letter of the Hebrew
+alphabet, _aleph_, means an ox, and the letter is something like the
+shape of the head of that animal with its horns; and another letter,
+called _shin_, which in Hebrew means a tooth, is actually very like a
+tooth with three points. In many languages these signs have become so
+altered that they do not now resemble the things they at first stood
+for; but the first steps in the invention of written language were
+certainly made by signs representing the thing of which the person
+wished to give an idea. But you will learn all about these ancient
+writings from other books.
+
+The men whose lives I am going to describe lived long before any of
+these writings were invented. They _spoke_ a language of course, though
+there is nothing left to show that they knew of any kind of writing,
+and they are called Pre-historic men because they lived before there
+were any histories either written by themselves or about them. But they
+could draw a little, as we know from the pictures of animals, birds,
+and fishes scratched upon pieces of slate, and bone, and stone found in
+their graves. Perhaps these pictures were memorials of their great or
+wise men, or showed that they were clever hunters, or fishermen.
+
+They knew the use of fire. Half burnt bones and wood and ashes are
+plentiful in the caves where they lived. They had none of the means we
+possess for kindling fire, and there are only two ways by which they
+could have got it. They might have rubbed two pieces of very dry wood
+together until the heat lighted them, as many savages do at the present
+time; or they might have struck sparks from flint upon rotten wood and
+blown the spark into a flame. We may be sure that when once a fire was
+lighted they would take care it did not go out, and if they wanted to
+travel they would carry with them a piece of smouldering wood to light
+the fire again. I do not suppose that these pre-historic men were any
+more civilized than the savages of Australia and other countries, and
+I have often thought when looking at these savages that they live in
+almost exactly the same way as the earliest inhabitants of Europe did.
+They have the same shaped weapons and tools made of stone, and these
+are fixed to the handles in the same way. They have the same kinds of
+needles and fish-hooks made of bone, and they sew skins together with
+threads made from the sinews of animals. Thus we see men living now
+in many parts of the world who are quite as uncivilized as the old
+inhabitants of Europe, who lived perhaps thousands of years before the
+Egyptians and Assyrians.
+
+These very ancient men knew nothing about metals. All their tools were
+made of flint, or bone, or stone, and they were of the rough shape you
+see in the pictures on the next page, and it is for this reason that
+this has been called the _Stone Age_. These were chipped out with great
+trouble and labour, and most of them were not even polished. With these
+they had to kill animals for food, to cut down trees, and fight against
+their enemies. The skeleton of a mastodon was found in the state of
+Missouri in America about thirty-five years ago with numbers of these
+flint arrow-heads underneath and near it. Perhaps it had been shot at
+with arrows, and when it died the flint points fell out of its decaying
+flesh. But it is not likely that these pre-historic men could have
+killed many such large animals, unless they caught them in pits covered
+over with branches of trees and earth, into which they might fall,
+as elephants are sometimes caught in Africa.
+
+[Illustration: X.
+
+  1. _Flint Arrow-head._
+  2. _Stone Axe in handle._
+  3. _Flint Knife._
+  4. _Bone Harpoon._
+  5. _Bone Needles._
+  6. _Sceptre made of Horn._
+  7. _Marrow Spoon._]
+
+Nothing shows us so well the immense time which must have passed since
+the men of the stone age lived as that these flint weapons and tools
+are found nearly all over the world, in Northern Europe, including
+our own country, in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Palestine, Africa,
+Japan, America, &c.; and yet none of the present inhabitants of these
+countries have any history or tradition of the time when they were
+used. Metals are now used instead, and there is no record of the time
+when flint only was known. We are quite certain however that the stone
+age men lived at the same period as the great animals of the Tertiary
+age, the mammoth, the mastodon, the woolly rhinoceros, the Irish stag,
+the cave bear, and others you have read of in former chapters, because
+flint and stone weapons are found in the same beds of earth with these
+animals.[24]
+
+Suppose one of the present Indian or African elephants with his rider
+were to fall into a river and they were to sink to the bottom and be
+covered with mud, and suppose his rider had in his pocket some of our
+sovereigns. If that elephant should be accidentally dug up thousands of
+years to come, when most likely all elephants will have died off the
+earth, people would know for certain, from the date and figure of the
+Queen on the money, that elephants were used by the English in this
+reign, even if all our books and monuments had perished, and a new
+people inhabited the Earth. Something of the same kind has happened to
+prove to us that the stone-age men saw the mammoth alive. In one of
+their graves there is a slice of a mammoth’s great back tooth with a
+beautiful picture of the animal, with his bristly hair, scratched on
+the ivory, and there are also many of the flint and stone weapons which
+show that the skeleton in the grave was that of a primeval man. This
+little picture tells its tale more faithfully than any history. It is
+all the more certain to tell it truly because it was never _meant_ to
+tell one. When that man was buried with this sign that he was a mighty
+hunter of the mammoth, or an artist, no one could imagine that he would
+ever be dug up to show us, who come so long afterwards, that he saw the
+mammoth roaming through the forests of the far away past. There can be
+no doubt that it is a very good drawing of the mammoth with its long
+turned-up tusks, like those in the picture at the beginning of the book.
+
+In another place a picture of a fight between some reindeer scratched
+upon a piece of slate has been found. This was in a cave in France,
+and it, as well as the numbers of bones of these animals in the caves,
+shows that the reindeer, which now only inhabits the Arctic regions,
+must have been common then in France. You will see drawings of both
+these on page 135.
+
+These primeval people built no houses. They lived in natural caves, and
+scattered the remains of their food about the floor, so that we know
+what they ate. Among the animals they used for food were the horse,
+the reindeer, the ox, the cave-lion and bear, the wolf, the hyena, the
+goat, the hare and several others, besides salmon and other fish. They
+were very fond of the marrow of the bones, which they cracked with
+stone hammers, and had little spoons made of bone with which to pick it
+out.
+
+They had places for making flint weapons too. At Cissbury Camp, near
+Worthing, there is one of their old workshops. There are galleries dug
+into the chalk where they got the flints, and there are thousands of
+chips of flint lying about, with half finished arrow-heads, and some
+of the tools they dug with. They had no spades or pickaxes; but they
+used the broad, flat, shoulder-blade bone of the ox as a spade, and the
+sharp brow antler of a deer’s horn for a pickaxe, to get these flints
+out with. It must have been very hard work for them, because bone
+spades and horn pickaxes would soon wear out, and would not be nearly
+so useful as ours made of iron.
+
+[Illustration: XI.
+
+_Picture of Mammoth Scratched on Ivory._
+
+_Fight between Reindeer Scratched on Slate._]
+
+It is difficult to be certain how these stone-age people cooked their
+food. Of course they could have roasted it, and the half-burnt bones in
+some caves show that they did so; but in some caves in France there is
+not a single burnt bone to be found. In these French cave dwellings,
+too, there are no pieces of earthenware, as there are in some
+others; so that the people could not have boiled it, unless they had
+wooden pots and dropped red-hot stones into the water in them until the
+meat got boiled, as some savages do now. Or they might have cooked it
+under the hot ashes.
+
+The people who used earthenware must have made more progress. It is
+easy to understand how they made this useful discovery. Suppose they
+had lighted a fire upon a damp clay soil, the earth would get baked
+hard and crack off in pieces, and they would see that this soil could
+be worked in the hands while soft into the shape of pans and dishes,
+which could be dried quite hard in the sun or baked in hot ashes, just
+as boys make clay marbles now. They could live much more comfortably
+even with these rough earthenware things, and cook their food more
+conveniently; but they still used the stone and flint tools and
+weapons, and iron was still unknown to them.
+
+The people of whom I have been speaking are principally the men of the
+First Stone Age, when the art of polishing tools and weapons had not
+been found out. They simply chipped these things out of the flints and
+left them very rough; but the men of the next, or Second Stone Age,
+made great improvements. They ground their flint knives and axes with
+other stones, and rubbed them down to sharp edges and points, so that
+they must have been much more useful for killing and cutting up the
+animals they hunted. All their bone and horn tools are much better
+made, and sometimes ornamented prettily with marks cut upon them. The
+Second Stone Age men evidently wore clothing, most probably made of the
+skins of animals—for the long strips of bone with a hole at one end
+which you see in the picture could not have been used for any other
+purpose, except to draw threads through something. The threads were
+very likely either the sinews of animals pulled out of the flesh, or
+thin strips of their skins, or perhaps the inner bark of a tree twisted
+into a kind of string. In the colder parts of Europe and America these
+ancient people would need some protection from the weather. How then
+did the people of the First Stone Age manage, if they had no bone
+needles, as I think they had not, with which to make clothing? They
+must have wrapped themselves in the skins just as they came from the
+backs of the animals.
+
+It is not easy to be always sure, when we find a cave and all these
+relics of pre-historic man, whether the inhabitants belonged to the
+First or the Second Stone Age. Sometimes there are signs of polishing
+and grinding on the tools, and then we may suppose that men were
+gradually getting more skilful, until they finished off all their
+weapons beautifully. But there is such a very great difference in the
+perfection of these useful articles found in some places and those
+found in others that we have no doubt men made slow progress, from the
+rough or First Stone Age, to the polished or Second Stone Age.
+
+In neither the first nor second stone period had men yet learned to
+build any kind of habitations. They lived in caves simply, like wild
+animals. On the banks of the river Vezère in France, which has cut
+its way deeply through the rock, there are some celebrated caves once
+inhabited by pre-historic men, and some of them are very large.
+They were most likely hollowed out in the cliff by water, and many
+generations of men lived here. In one of them four human skeletons were
+found, with plenty of stone and flint tools, besides the bones of the
+mammoth and lion, reindeer and other animals. The mammoth then as well
+as the reindeer lived at that time in the valley of the Vezère. There
+is no doubt that these caves were inhabited at separate times by people
+who used only the roughest and simplest stone tools, and by others
+who had made some progress and could polish their tools and make them
+of bone and could scratch pictures of animals upon slips of bone and
+slate. It is curious that all these drawings are side-view drawings,
+and they are only outlines, just like the drawings of children now,
+and the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions; because these people,
+although they were grown up, had not discovered the art of drawing in
+perspective and shading the figures. Still the pictures are wonderfully
+true to nature, and must have been copied from living animals. There is
+no earthenware in any of these caves, so that the useful art of making
+pottery had not been discovered, neither is there any in the caves in
+Switzerland, where the bones of the mammoth, lion, and rhinoceros are
+also found, and the tools and weapons are much the same as those in the
+French caverns. It is impossible to say whether the cave-dwellers of
+France and Switzerland lived at the same time exactly, but they were in
+about the same condition of civilization, and they must both have been
+quite familiar with the appearance of the mammoth and lion, and other
+animals, which are not mentioned in any history, however old it may be,
+as inhabitants of these countries.
+
+A discovery has lately been made in France of a large cavern near
+Belfort, in the limestone rock, which has been covered up for ages. The
+quarrymen while cutting out the stone came upon a small opening leading
+into a very large cave, in which there was a great quantity of human
+skeletons and bones and some beautifully ornamented vases, polished
+stone bracelets, and a mat of plaited rushes. To these people, then,
+the arts of pottery and weaving were known, and this was probably one
+of their burying-places. They were evidently much more civilized than
+the ancient people of the valley of the Vezère; but this cave must also
+be of a great age, and its inhabitants have left no record of their
+history in any kind of writing.
+
+Quite lately, too, we have learned something of the early races of man
+in Colorado. Many of the caves in that country have been altered and
+made more like regular houses, and some appear even to have been cut
+out of the rock entirely by human hands; and in the plains there are
+ruins of large cities.
+
+Though still in the stone age, for all the weapons yet found among
+these ruins are of stone, the Colorado people were more civilized than
+the stone-age people of the Vezère caverns, because they had begun
+to build and knew how to make pottery. It is strange, too, that the
+present natives of Colorado are not so civilized as the early people,
+and if they have descended from them they have not improved, but rather
+the contrary. There are other caverns in various parts of the world
+containing these curious relics of races long since passed away, but
+some of the principal have been mentioned, enough perhaps to interest
+you and show you that men were living in Europe together with the large
+animals of the Tertiary period, and that they had made very little
+progress in the arts and manufactures, and had not even begun to build
+the roughest houses.
+
+In many parts of the world even now there are savages nearly as
+uncivilized as the cave-dwellers of Europe were then. When Captain
+Cook visited New Zealand, more than a hundred years ago, the natives
+there had nothing but stone and bone tools, very like those found in
+the European caverns, and the inhabitants of some of the islands in the
+Pacific Ocean still use stone axes and hammers and bone needles.[25]
+Captain Moresby, too, who made a voyage to the south-east coast of New
+Guinea a few years ago, tells us that the natives have beautiful stone
+axes, but they were so ignorant of the use of iron that they refused
+to give him one of their stone axes for a new iron hatchet which he
+offered them. No doubt the stone weapon cost a great deal of labour and
+patience to make, and perhaps the iron one was made by machinery in a
+few minutes, and was really more useful, but the native had proved his
+own axe and knew nothing of the iron one, so that it is no wonder that
+he refused it. But what a history these two axes tell—the stone and the
+iron! The stone shows us man in his childhood, and the iron man in his
+manhood, and what an immensely long time there is between the two. How
+much thought, and trial and failure, and patience and industry, were
+spent by mankind before the stone axe grew into the iron!
+
+In Europe man has long since grown out of his childhood, but in many
+parts of the world he is no more civilized than the men who saw the
+mammoth crashing through the forests of England and France, and heard
+the lion roar at night on the banks of the Thames, and watched the
+hippopotamus swimming across the river at Westminster. It is most
+likely, then, that Europe and parts of Asia and America were inhabited
+long before those places where men are even now in the stone age—such
+as the islands in the Pacific Ocean, New Guinea, Australia, &c.
+
+What a life the pre-historic men of Europe must have lived! Here
+they were surrounded by huge dangerous animals, and had no means of
+protecting themselves against them but with these rough stone weapons.
+Where London now stands with its miles of streets and busy life there
+was a mighty forest, and the mammoth and rhinoceros tramped through
+it by day, and the lion and hyena hunted the deer at night. When the
+pre-historic men came down to the banks of the Thames in the day-time
+to spear salmon, they saw the hippopotamus plunging about in the water
+among the rushes, sweeping the long grass into their wide mouths, and
+swimming from side to side with their young ones perched upon their
+necks. It must have been a grand sight, but a fearful one too, and it
+is no wonder that men thought the caves the only safe places to live in.
+
+Sometimes in India the elephants come into the villages at night and
+throw down wooden houses and kill people, and they are very much
+feared, so that we can suppose how much more terrible the mammoth might
+have been to the uncivilized cave-dwellers. If they shot at him with
+the flint-pointed arrows they could scarcely hurt him, and it is more
+likely that they got out of his way as quickly as possible whenever
+they met him, and took good care never to interfere with the lion and
+rhinoceros.
+
+
+THE LAKE-DWELLERS.
+
+Among the earliest inhabitants of Europe, there were some who did not
+live in caves; but I think they must have lived a long time after the
+cave-dwellers, when they built their houses out in the middle of the
+lakes. These houses were built in a very curious way, and the remains
+of them have been discovered in Ireland and Scotland, Switzerland and
+other countries. The people carried quantities of stones, and earth,
+and sticks out into the lake and let them sink to the bottom. Then
+when they had piled up enough to make an island, they laid wood across
+and set up their huts, and lived there surrounded by water. These were
+very poor houses of course; but when men had begun to build for
+themselves, they would find how much more comfortable they were than in
+damp and dark caves. They must have had some kind of boats or canoes,
+or they could not have passed between their lake-dwellings and the land
+unless they swam to them; but I do not think that any of these boats
+have been found. Perhaps they were made of the dried skins of animals
+stretched over wooden frames, as I have seen savages make boats.
+
+[Illustration: XII.
+
+_Lake-Dwellings._]
+
+There was another way of building these lake-dwellings, and a better
+way too. Long poles were driven into the earth at the bottom of the
+water, and when the builders had got enough of these together they
+laid other poles across them, and built their huts on this floor above
+the water. People are living now in much the same way near the Orinoco
+river in South America, in New Guinea, and in Central Africa.[26]
+The land all round is covered with water from the overflowing of the
+rivers, which are very large, and the huts are built up on these poles
+out of the way of it. The lake-dwellers of Europe would thus be safer
+in their houses from dangerous animals than if they were on land. They
+were more civilized than the cave-dwellers, but still a great many of
+their tools and weapons were of stone and bone; yet we know that they
+had made wonderful progress, because they had learned to make pottery,
+and even to weave cloths out of hemp or flax. They had most likely
+begun to plant and cultivate the land, too, for corn is found about
+these dwellings, and the bones of domestic animals are very numerous.
+They had left the cave-dwellers a long way behind in many things, in
+wearing artificial clothing, in cultivating the land, and in keeping
+domestic animals; but their implements—that is, their weapons and
+tools—were not much improved, and were very much like those of the
+cave-dwellers, though better finished and more polished than some of
+theirs.
+
+But not all the articles used by the lake people were of stone and
+bone. Some of those who lived in the Swiss lakes had ornaments, such
+as bracelets and hair-pins, made of the metal called bronze, and no
+doubt they made spear-heads of the metal, because they would look to
+usefulness before ornament.
+
+Now you see how these people seem to have lived: first the old stone
+age men, then those of the newer or polished stone age, and lastly
+the lake-dwellers. The people of both the first and second stone ages
+certainly saw the mammoth, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, lion, and reindeer
+alive in France, Switzerland, and England; but when the lake-dwellings
+were built, all these animals, except perhaps the reindeer, had died,
+and most of the animals were the same as they are now. None of these
+people have left us any kind of history whatever, except that which
+their simple works tell us, their flint and bone weapons, and their
+dwellings. They have set up no gigantic monuments like the Egyptians or
+the Druids. They thought of no men to come after them who would take an
+interest in their ways; but it is fortunate that what they did make was
+of such lasting materials as stone and flint, or we should have known
+next to nothing about their lives.
+
+It is impossible to say how many thousands of years may have passed
+before the rough stone weapons were replaced by the polished stone, or
+the cave was exchanged for an artificial house in a lake; but you must
+feel in your minds that the time was immense, and the more we study the
+ways and works of pre-historic man, the more certain we become that it
+is longer than the whole time that has passed since men first began to
+use any kind of writing.
+
+
+KITCHEN-MIDDENS.
+
+I dare say you have seen untidy people in country places, and even in
+towns, throw oyster-shells and broken dishes and dirt outside their
+doors until quite a heap is formed. This is called a “midden,” and the
+habit of doing this is a very old one. We learn just a little more of
+the history of man from great middens made by ancient people in several
+countries. They were first discovered in Denmark, and since then
+they have been found in Scotland, Brazil, and New Zealand. They are
+sometimes very large, and must have been used by the whole village as
+places to throw the refuse of their cookery in. When these heaps have
+been dug into all sorts of things have been found in them—the shells
+of oysters and mussels, bones of fishes, birds, and animals, pieces
+of broken earthenware, little ornaments, stone axes, arrow-heads, wood
+ashes, burnt bones, and other odds and ends. In Brazil many of these
+kitchen-middens are on the sea shore, and it seems as if the people
+who made them came there to live on the shell-fish, for the shells
+are the same as those living in the sea close by now. In New Zealand
+the middens contain many of the bones of the Moa, which was described
+in “The Animal Part,” and has now perished, and these are cracked in
+such a manner that the people evidently wanted to get at the marrow
+in them, and it shows too that this gigantic bird was common in New
+Zealand then. The midden makers seemed to have lived in the open air,
+and wherever food was most plentiful. Perhaps they built huts of the
+bark and small branches of trees like the Australian savages, but such
+houses would not last. We only know of the life of the midden makers
+from these heaps. Their weapons are of the same kind and pattern as
+those of the Second Stone Age, but they had learned to make rough
+earthenware dishes and basins, and some pieces of a woven material
+have been found, and pieces of wood and bone worked with a little
+skill. Whether they lived after or before the lake-dwellers I cannot
+say, but I should think about the same time.
+
+These pre-historic people, nevertheless, were not always thinking of
+making things which were useful. They thought too of making ornaments,
+many of which are found in their dwellings and graves. Like ourselves,
+they had an idea that little trinkets improved their appearance. In
+one grave a skeleton was found with a small pile of shells under its
+neck, which no doubt had been strung together as a necklace, and when
+the string rotted the shells parted and fell in a heap under the head,
+to be a memorial of that ancient man or woman’s possession of the same
+feelings as our own. Various little articles, too, found about the
+lake-dwellings show that people liked to decorate themselves.
+
+We shall never know what language they spoke, but they must have been
+able to tell their thoughts to one another. It was most likely a simple
+language with few words as names for things and a simple grammar, like
+the language of savages, because they had not so many things to talk
+about as we have. The names of animals would perhaps be imitated from
+their cries and the noises they made. These cries would be among the
+most familiar sounds to them, and when they wished to speak of some
+animal the simplest way would be to imitate the noise it generally
+makes. If we think of our own language, we shall see how very likely
+this was. We have many such words. We teach our children the names of
+animals by the sounds they make. The dog we call “bow-wow,” the cow
+“moo-moo,” the duck “quack-quack,” and many other names of the same
+kind which you will think of yourselves. At the present time even the
+name by which the Egyptians call the donkey has almost exactly the
+same sound as our “hee-haw.” This trick of doubling or repeating the
+sound, too, is very common among savages, who are as far behind us as
+the pre-historic men were. The natives of Australia give these double
+names to a great many animals and things, and sometimes do the same
+with English words. They call fish “ningy-ningy,” and a certain tree
+the “bunya-bunya,” and their language is full of such words. But it is
+not only the names of things which have been made in this way. Verbs as
+well as nouns have grown up thus. When we whisper to one another, that
+word imitates the low sound we make.
+
+I shall leave you to trace the natural origin of the following words,
+and think how much of man’s spoken language is taken from common
+sounds. Thus we have roar, shriek, whistle, hiss, sigh, sing, ring,
+thump, bump, clash, clang, bang, twang, clap, smack, slap, smash,
+swish, swirl, gong, thong, boom, bellow, batter, chatter, clatter,
+snap, snip, whip, gurgle, shiver, quiver, rumble, roll, rattle,
+prattle, and a hundred more. Words thus derived from familiar sounds
+abound in all languages, and they, no doubt, are the easy steps by
+which men climbed to a more complicated speech. The earliest men must
+have been obliged to pay great attention to animals and birds, which
+have voices of their own; for to hunt and catch them was the principal
+occupation of their lives; therefore, when speaking of them to one
+another, they would naturally call them by names resembling the sounds
+they made. Our verbs “to squeak” and “to squeal” are certainly taken
+from the cries of animals when in pain; but I have said enough to show
+you how language grew up among pre-historic people.
+
+We do not know for certain that they had any musical instruments, but
+they would hear the sighing of the wind among the trees, and it would
+almost certainly be found out that blowing down a hollow stick or reed,
+open at one end and closed at the other, would make a whistle; but if
+they used any of these things they would not last like the stone tools,
+and have decayed away; and we do know that they had begun to draw upon
+such imperishable materials as bone and slate.
+
+There is a very interesting specimen of a human fossil in the British
+Museum, which you ought to go and see, if you can; but in case you are
+not able there is a drawing of it on page 159.[27] This specimen was
+brought to England about the year 1814. Others like it have since been
+found imbedded in the hard breccia limestone rock at the same place on
+the shore of the island of Guadaloupe. The skeleton most likely was
+that of a woman, from the shape of some of the bones, and most probably
+was of the race of Caribs, of whom there are none living now. Perhaps
+this was originally a burying place of the ancient inhabitants of the
+island, and when the sea washed the small broken pieces of shells and
+corals over it (all of which contain lime) they hardened into breccia
+rock, and the skeleton became completely imbedded in it. This must
+have taken a very long time, at all events; but I do not think the
+Guadaloupe fossils are as old as the people who lived in the caves in
+France. Some little ornaments and articles of human workmanship are
+found with these skeletons, which show that the people to whom they
+belonged were still in the Stone Age. There is very little to judge
+from when we wish to get some idea of the time these fossils have been
+in this breccia: but at this particular place the rock is formed pretty
+quickly, as we can see; and it is quite likely that these skeletons
+were buried there long after the mammoth, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus
+died out of Europe. However, they are the most complete specimens
+we have of any fossil human beings. In looking at the drawing you will
+see the leg bones and hips, part of the backbone, the ribs of one side,
+and an arm bone; but you see no skull, because the bones of the skull
+are very thin, and have become crushed down into the limestone. In one
+of these fossils, which they have in Paris, taken from near the same
+place, the bones are much more distinct, and part of the lower jaw with
+some teeth in it can be seen. These fossil men no doubt lived before
+the period of written human history began; but they are not considered
+to be at all the oldest of pre-historic men.
+
+[Illustration: XIII.
+
+_The Guadaloupe Human Fossil._]
+
+Two periods in the life of mankind followed all these long-lost and
+forgotten people, and they are called the Bronze Age and the Iron
+Age; but now _history_ comes in, and there are plenty of old records
+and books to tell you about these. Bronze is a mixed metal of copper
+and tin, and it was used by the oldest nations who have left any
+histories—the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. It was better
+than stone because it could be made sharper and would not chip, and
+swords and armour, vases, axes, hammers, needles, &c., were made of
+it.[28]
+
+The Stone Age is beyond all history, the Bronze begins with it, and
+the Iron Age began at some distant time before the dawn of authentic
+history. Thus we are told, in Genesis iv. 22, that Tubal Cain taught
+people to make it. It was used also by the Egyptians for perhaps 2,000
+years before the Christian era; but the real Iron Age is that in which
+we are living now. We can, indeed, make all metals much better than any
+of the older nations.
+
+But there is a wide gap between the time when people left off using
+stone and discovered bronze and iron; and if one of the Druids could
+come to life he might help us to fill it up, because those old
+British priests had many secrets, which they told to one another from
+generation to generation.
+
+If the Spanish conquerors had not destroyed the civilization of Mexico
+and Peru, we might know something of the discovery of the metals there,
+and the people of India and China must have used them long ago; but
+the first use of metal in any country where it was found out would
+most likely be before the people had begun to put their language into
+any kind of writing, so that the time would be forgotten among the
+many scraps of lost knowledge which we have tried to collect from the
+remains of the industry of pre-historic man.
+
+We have seen how much these ancient people differed from us in their
+civilization, and how far they were behind us in everything; but we
+must not suppose that they were very different in bodily size and
+shape. Some of their skulls might have belonged to a philosopher, or
+they might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage. The
+skulls from the Cromagnon and Engis caves are quite equal in size and
+shape to those of several uncivilized, and even of some civilized
+races of the present time, and there are people in all large cities
+whose heads are not better formed. Though the outward signs of their
+civilization then were so different from ours, it is not certain that
+their mental capacity was much less.
+
+A race possessing considerable civilization may, we know, pass away,
+as the Assyrians and the Pyramid builders have. In one of the Pacific
+islands—Easter Island—a thousand miles from the nearest land, there
+are hundreds of carved images of stone, fifty or sixty feet high, and
+weighing perhaps a hundred tons each. The people who made these must
+have been very numerous and must have had considerable skill. Yet they
+have passed away. The arts of Nineveh and Babylon have only lately
+become known, so that, you see, the works of a race may easily become
+hidden from us who follow. Quite lately, too, the works of a partly
+civilized people have been discovered in Ohio in America. There are
+there hundreds of mounds and earth embankments forming fortified camps.
+Some of them are several miles round, and they could only have been
+made by a very numerous and intelligent people who knew something about
+geometry; for the circles, squares, and angles of these earthworks are
+quite as correct as we could make them. Among the multitude of things
+found here are copper tools made by hammering, ornamental pottery,
+silver beads, plates of mica with scrolls and designs engraved on
+them, and carefully carved pieces of stone. These carvings are most
+curious and excellently finished. They represent human heads and
+many animals, such as the bear, otter, wolf, beaver, raccoon, frog,
+rattlesnake, heron, crow, &c. A people, then, who could do these things
+and took pleasure in doing them must have possessed great intelligence
+and a knowledge of things far beyond a simple state. They even had
+religious ideas, such as they were, for they had places for sacrifice.
+All their works are now overgrown by forests, but it is impossible to
+mistake them; yet the native Indians of Ohio living now have no idea
+that such a people lived in their country before them, and no tradition
+at all about a people whose civilization was so far superior to their
+own.
+
+We may come nearer to our own times, and look at the Assyrians and
+Egyptians. Until quite recently nothing was known about the Assyrians
+except what could be learned from the few references made to them in
+Scripture and some ancient writers; but Mr. Layard dug up their cities,
+and found that they possessed the arts of building, sculpture, working
+in metals, and a written language. All this was buried under the sand
+of a desert! Then there is the great Pyramid of Egypt, built in a way
+that we could not surpass, and with much knowledge of geometry and
+other sciences.[29] The men who designed and constructed these works
+could not have lived among a half-barbarous people; and as these are
+the highest works of the people, how much there must have been that
+went before, of which there is no trace now, when Assyria and Egypt
+were in _their_ age of stone axes and flint arrow-heads.
+
+I do not think that the Stone-Age men of Europe were nearly so
+civilized. At all events, they have not left any such imperishable
+monuments as the gigantic images of Easter Island, the earthworks of
+the Ohio people, or the sculptures, writings, and buildings of the
+Assyrians and Egyptians; but they might have been more civilized than
+they seem to have been from their simple weapons and tools. They might
+have made many things which were perishable, and have been destroyed
+by time—things which would have given us a higher belief in their
+intelligence and civilization.
+
+The past history of the human race may be compared to the rise and
+fall of the tide. Wave after wave has risen higher and higher on the
+everlasting shore of Time, and when the tide was at its highest it has
+fallen again slowly, to rise again and again in the same way through
+many ages. We know that man may rise slowly from a simple condition
+to much civilization and power, and may again sink back almost to
+barbarism, as has been the case with the people of whom we have been
+speaking, and then again a new civilization may grow up. It is possible
+that all now savage nations are the sinking descendants of some, in
+comparison, once civilized people. Modern nations are taking up the
+ground of savages all over the world, and soon there will be no trace
+of these simple people. Thus it may have been with mankind throughout
+all the time during which they have occupied the earth, and so it may
+be perhaps again.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[22] A fine Mexican MS. on diapered cloth, with figures and mystical
+signs, has lately been added to the MS. department of the British
+Museum.
+
+[23] Some fine examples of papyrus writings on the North-west
+Staircase, Upper Floor.
+
+[24] British Antiquities Room, upper floor, Middle and Upper
+Shelf-cases, Nos. 1, 2, and 5-12, flint and stone implements.
+Table-case B, horn implements from French caves and Swiss
+lake-dwellings.
+
+[25] Examples of stone implements of New Zealanders in Ethnographical
+Room, Cases No. 45-48, upper floor.
+
+[26] In Lake Mohrya. _Across Africa_, by V. L. Cameron.
+
+[27] At the end of Room VI., opposite the door, North Gallery.
+
+[28] See examples in the Bronze Room, upper floor, British Museum.
+
+[29] Built of nummulitic limestone, composed of shells of foraminifera.
+See Case 15, Room V., North Gallery.
+
+
+
+
+_CONCLUSION._
+
+
+I have now put “The Puzzle of Life” together as well as I can, and
+there is not much more to say. You must do the rest for yourselves by
+going to the Museums, where all the pieces are collected, and seeing
+them with your own eyes. When you stand before these silent witnesses
+to the great age of our Earth, and all that is on it, you will feel how
+wonderful the story they tell is. They have no words to speak to you,
+but there is a power in your own minds which interprets their history
+through your own thoughts. They are only lumps of rock and lifeless
+bones, but they seem to say to you, “We are living again now, because
+we are teaching you a lesson which the great Builder of this Universe
+wishes you to learn from us. There is not a stone or fossil among us
+but it has its tale to tell—a tale of time and tide, and long past
+ages, and innumerable changes, and a life that was, and progress from
+a lower to a higher existence. We have obeyed the same eternal laws
+of one Creator from the beginning, as all things will to the end of
+time. We have opened the great Book of Nature from the first page of
+the ‘life-dawn animal’ to the last, on which the hand of the Almighty
+has written the name of Man—his most perfect work. We, you, and all
+things which have lived and will live, have bodies made of particles
+which will be returned to the Earth, no single atom of which has been
+destroyed since the first, but has been fashioned over and over again
+into innumerable forms of tree and flower, of gossamer-winged insect
+and towering mammoth, throughout the long ages in which our Globe has
+known day and night, cold and heat, summer and winter.”
+
+There is nothing sad, if we look at it rightly, in this constant
+succession of life and death. It is
+
+                        A moulding
+    Of forms, and a wondrous birth,
+    And a growing and fair unfolding
+    Of life from life, and life from death.
+    For death, a mother benign,
+    Transformeth but destroyeth not,
+    And the new thing fair of the old is wrought.
+
+  G. F. ARMSTRONG.
+
+Is it not worth while then to listen to these stories of the Earth—to
+spell them out for ourselves? They are written everywhere,—in the
+mountains and valleys, the rivers and seas, on the hard faces of
+granite cliffs, on the rounded pebbles of the sea beach, and even in
+the finest dust of the roads. We have not to go far to hear them:
+every foot-step on the ground covers a chapter great or small in the
+universal history, and the stone walls of our houses could speak with
+ten thousand tongues of all they witnessed in their long life on the
+floor of an ancient ocean.
+
+We can scarcely have a more pleasant occupation and greater interest
+than in searching for and putting together the pieces of this wonderful
+and beautiful puzzle, and in doing our utmost to “Summon from the
+shadowy Past the forms that once have been.”
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  Age of bronze, 161;
+    of iron, 161;
+    of reptiles, 81
+
+  Aleph, 125
+
+  Amber, 69
+
+  Ammonites, 90, 97
+
+  Animal Part, the, 77;
+    animals of coal period, 71
+
+  Ants, white, 61
+
+  Arctic climate, 67;
+    expedition, 67
+
+  Archæopteryx, 91, 93
+
+  Australian savages, 127
+
+
+  Babylon and Nineveh, 164, 165
+
+  Bear, grisly, 106
+
+  Beginning of life, 58
+
+  Bird forms, earliest, 89;
+    reptiles, 85
+
+  Blacklead, 58
+
+  Boulders carried by ice, 48
+
+  Bogwood, 70
+
+  Boiling springs, 54
+
+  Bronze, age of, 161, 162;
+    implements in British Museum, 162
+
+  Brighton Downs, 99
+
+  Burning mountains, 19
+
+
+  Calamites, 42, 68
+
+  Cañons of Colorado, 8
+
+  Caves of Engis and Cromagnon, 163;
+    near Belfort and of Switzerland, 141;
+    of the Vezère, 139
+
+  Cetiosaurus, 86
+
+  Chalk, nature of, 26;
+    pits, 20;
+    ammonites and foraminifera in, 27;
+    period, 95;
+    under the ocean, 29, 99
+
+  “Challenger” expedition, 27
+
+  Changes have been gradual, 43
+
+  Cissbury camp, 134
+
+  Clay, London, 21, 22;
+    and mud, 33
+
+  Climate, Arctic, and of coal formations, 67
+
+  Club-mosses, 61
+
+  Clothing, 138
+
+  Coal beds, 31;
+    in Arctic regions, 67;
+    plants of the, 63;
+    is fossil wood, 73;
+    is sunlight compressed, 30
+
+  Colorado, the people in, 142
+
+  Compressed plants, 15
+
+  Conclusion, 168
+
+  Cookery, 137
+
+  Corals, 78
+
+  Creation, the plan of, 117
+
+  Cretaceous period, 96
+
+  Cromagnon and Engis, caves of, 163
+
+
+  Dawn of life, 56;
+    plant, 59
+
+  Denudation, 49, 50
+
+  Dinornis, specimens of, in British Museum, 116
+
+  Dinosaurus, 89
+
+  Dinotherium, 114
+
+  Drawings, pre-historic, 135
+
+  Dwellings and food of men, 137
+
+
+  Early histories, 123;
+    plant life, 59
+
+  Earth, early history of, 1, 2, 3;
+    interior of, 18;
+    intense heat of, 24;
+    climate of, 48;
+    not yet fit for man, 75;
+    ‘foraminifera earth’, 30
+
+  Earthquakes, 18, 19
+
+  Earthworks of Ohio, 165
+
+  Easter island monuments, 164
+
+  Egypt, monuments of, 166
+
+  Eodendron, 59
+
+  Eophyton, 59
+
+  Eozöon, 57, 77
+
+
+  First weapons, 121
+
+  Fish-lizards, 85
+
+  Fishes, fossil, 71
+
+  Flint, origin of, 14;
+    in chalk, 96;
+    weapons, where found, 131;
+    tool manufactory, 134
+
+  Foraminifera, 20;
+    ‘foraminifera earth’, 30;
+    drawings of, 97;
+    specimens of, in British Museum, 99
+
+  Forests under the sea, 75, 76
+
+  Fossil, derivation of, 10;
+    plants, 61;
+    sunlight, 73;
+    footprints, 83;
+    human, 157, 159
+
+  Food and dwellings, 137
+
+  Footprints, fossil, 83
+
+  Flying reptiles, 89
+
+
+  Geological part, 17
+
+  Geology, derivation of, 19
+
+  Geysers, 54
+
+  Gigantic animals, 101;
+    birds, 115
+
+  Glaciers and icebergs, 47
+
+  Granite, raised, 23;
+    appearance of, 24
+
+  Gravel, &c., 35
+
+  Great Irish Stag, drawing, &c., of, 108
+
+  Guadaloupe human fossil, 157
+
+
+  Heat of the Earth, 3, 18
+
+  Hebrew letters, 125
+
+  Hesperornis, 92
+
+  Hippopotamus in England, 105
+
+  Histories, early, 123
+
+  Human part, the, 120;
+    fossils, 157
+
+
+  Ice age, 45;
+    more than one, 48
+
+  Icebergs and glaciers, 47
+
+  Ichthyornis, 92
+
+  Ichthyosaurus, 85
+
+  Implements, flint and stone, in British Museum, 131;
+    bronze, 162
+
+  India, elephants in, 145
+
+  Insects in coal forests, 64
+
+  Irish stag, 107
+
+  Islands appear and disappear, 39
+
+
+  Jet, 69
+
+  Jurassic age, 89
+
+
+  Kangaroo, fossil, 115
+
+  Kitchen-middens, 152
+
+
+  Labyrinthodon, 2
+
+  Lake-dwellers, 146;
+    dwellings in Europe, Africa, Asia, and New Guinea, 149
+
+  Language, origin of; and of pre-historic man, 155
+
+  Laurentian rocks, 57
+
+  Lena river, mammoth found, 102
+
+  Life, the dawn of, 56;
+    ‘life-dawn animal’, 57
+
+  Lignite, 69
+
+  Lion, English sabre-toothed, 106
+
+
+  Mammalia, 102
+
+  Mammoth, 49, 102-3;
+    bones of, in Siberia, Asia, North America, &c.;
+    drawing of, on ivory, 135;
+    in Essex, 104;
+    skull of, in British Museum, 104
+
+  Man and his works, 121;
+    his earliest inventions, 122;
+    mammoth, mastodon, reindeer, &c., contemporary with, 116;
+    pre-historic, 127, 131;
+    dwellings and food of, 137
+
+  Marsupial animal, 95
+
+  Mastodon, 102;
+    in Europe, America, India, &c., 104;
+    in Missouri, 128;
+    skeleton of, in British Museum, 104
+
+  Megalosaurus, 89
+
+  Megatherium, in South America, 110;
+    drawing of, 112;
+    account of, 113;
+    skeleton of, in British Museum, 113
+
+  Mexican writings, 124
+
+  Middens, kitchen, 152-4;
+    makers, life of, 153
+
+  Moa, 115-16
+
+  Monkeys, fossil, 102;
+    at Gibraltar, 102
+
+  Monuments of Easter Island, 164;
+    of Egypt and Assyria, 166
+
+  Mountains, burning, and covered with snow, 19
+
+  Moresby, Captain, in New Guinea, 143
+
+
+  New Guinea, stone age of, 143
+
+  New Zealand dinornis, 115;
+    moa, 116;
+    stone age of, 143
+
+  Nineveh and Babylon, ruins, &c., of, 164, 165
+
+  Norway, raised terraces of, 38
+
+
+  Ohio, earthworks of, 165
+
+  Oolite, 41, 86
+
+  Origin of language, 155
+
+
+  Papyrus writings, 125
+
+  Paris, built of shells, 100
+
+  Parts, the, are called fossils, 11
+
+  Past life, the signs of, 13
+
+  Peat, 70
+
+  Plan of creation, 117
+
+  Plants of coal forests, 63
+
+  Plesiosaurus, 85
+
+  Pottery, 141, 142
+
+  Pre-historic art, 133;
+    drawings, 135;
+    man, 127, 131;
+    weapons and tools, 129
+
+  Pterodactyl, derivation of, 89;
+    description of, 90
+
+  Puzzle, the framework of, 1-16;
+    parts of, where found, 5
+
+  Pyrenees, when raised, 100
+
+
+  Rain-drops, marks of, 84
+
+  Reindeer, drawing of, on slate, 135
+
+  Reptiles, the age of, 81
+
+  Rhinoceros in England, 105
+
+  Rocks, raising of the;
+    how placed, 21, 25;
+    carried by ice, 48
+
+
+  Sandstone, formation of, 25, 26;
+    Old Red, 62, 81;
+    New Red, 77
+
+  Slate hardened mud, 15
+
+  Sponges, 15, 78
+
+  Star-fish, 78
+
+  Stone age, 128;
+    first stone age, 137;
+    second, 138;
+    of New Guinea and New Zealand, 143, 145
+
+  Subsidence, 37
+
+  Succession of formations, 41, 42
+
+  Sucklers, 102
+
+  Sunlight, fossil, 73
+
+
+  Tertiary period, 34, 100
+
+  Time, the work of, 167
+
+  Tools, polished and rough, 139
+
+  Trilobite, 78
+
+
+  Upheaval and depression, 36, 38
+
+
+  Vegetable part, the, 56
+
+  Vertebrata, 101
+
+  Volcanoes and earthquakes, 19
+
+
+  Water, a powerful tool of Nature, 34, 45;
+    thrown out of the earth, 54
+
+  Weapons, early, 121;
+    and tools, where found, 131
+
+  Whales, 101
+
+  World, early history of the, 3, 4;
+    size and shape, 17;
+    materials of, 17;
+    heat of, 18
+
+  Work, the, of time, 167
+
+  Writing, origin of, 123;
+    Mexican, Egyptian, and Assyrian, 124, 125;
+    on papyrus, 125;
+    by signs, 125
+
+
+  LONDON: PRINTED BY
+  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+  AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
+
+
+‘The present little work, which is specially addressed to children,
+is written in so pleasant and easy a style, and its descriptions of
+life on the earth are on the whole so simple and accurate, that we can
+heartily recommend it to the attention of those who seek such a guide.
+The illustrations are good, and the general appearance of the book such
+that it may compare most favourably with other primers of geology.’
+
+  GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE.
+
+‘Written in clear and simple style, especially attractive to children.
+It includes an account of pre-historic man, and shows in many other
+ways that the writer is familiar with some of the latest phases of
+geological thought.’
+
+  ACADEMY.
+
+‘The avowed object of this charming little book is to place the results
+of these researches within the grasp of children, by presenting them
+in language at once clear, simple, and winning.... In this hard
+task Mr. NICOLS has succeeded admirably, without resorting to that
+base subterfuge—the attempt to clothe instruction in the guise of
+fiction.... This is true education, for it teaches children first to
+observe and then to reason.... Though the style of this delightful book
+is simple and childlike, it is as far as possible removed from being
+childish.’
+
+  PALL MALL GAZETTE.
+
+‘The language is plain, the descriptions are lucid, the illustrations
+apt, and the broad facts of the science are very correctly stated. The
+work, too, is free from all attempts at fine writing.... We wish the
+book success as at any rate an attempt to lay before the young fact
+instead of fiction.’
+
+  QUARTERLY JOURNAL of SCIENCE.
+
+‘The book is a successful attempt to explain the simplest facts of
+geology, and of the succession of life on the earth.’
+
+  WESTMINSTER REVIEW.
+
+‘The idea is a happy one, and will recommend itself to children; and we
+are bound to say that Mr. NICOLS has carried out his idea remarkably
+well, and produced a work which will do much to spread sound notions
+upon the gradual development of our earth and its inhabitants to the
+condition in which we now see them.... We can safely recommend Mr.
+NICOLS’ little book as one that will have a most beneficial effect in
+opening the minds of its young readers.’
+
+  POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW.
+
+‘This is a good little book, cleverly written by an able geologist, and
+well adapted for children. We can recommend the volume as a present to
+any intelligent boy or girl.’
+
+  LANCET.
+
+‘This book appears to be, in style, language, and scope, eminently
+adapted for its purpose, which is to awaken among the little folks an
+interest “in the history of life upon the earth,” and “give them the
+taste for more extended study in after years.”’
+
+  ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS.
+
+‘“Though these pages are designed for young persons,” says the Author,
+“other readers, perhaps, who are not familiar with the subject, may
+find some interest in them, if they are not deterred by the necessarily
+simple style,”—which, we venture to say, they most assuredly will
+not be.... To many grown persons, therefore, as well as their
+descendants, will this book be a great boon, which, if they are at all
+liberal-minded, they will advocate as well as appreciate.... Like the
+Science Primers of Professors Huxley, Roscoe, Balfour Stewart, &c., if
+duly read and weighed, it will tend to unravel and sweep away a deal of
+baneful superstition.’
+
+  LAND and WATER.
+
+‘That Mr. NICOLS has succeeded in the object he proposed to himself
+may be safely affirmed. He has done his work briefly and lucidly, and
+has produced a book capable of arresting the attention, not only of
+children, but of those from whom they receive their earlier lessons.’
+
+  The COUNTRY.
+
+‘A perfect “Open Sesame” for young scientific students, and so
+cleverly composed as to make students of those who are not scientific:
+not merely the young, but older people too. Mr. NICOLS thoroughly
+understands his work.’
+
+  NOTES and QUERIES.
+
+‘Easily and attractively written for young people.... The treatment of
+so wide a subject, and the condensing it into a volume of 150 pages is
+no light task. We can, however, congratulate Mr. NICOLS upon having
+accomplished it in so judicious, perhaps, better still, so suggestive
+a manner; and we have no doubt that his little book will become a
+well-worn favourite in the hands of all thoughtful and intelligent
+children who may be so fortunate as to possess it.’
+
+  ENGINEER.
+
+‘The manner in which the pieces of the puzzle—fossils—are found, put
+together, and interpreted, is related in language readily understood
+by children; the description of the vegetable, animal, and human parts
+being peculiarly interesting. The illustrations are the best of the
+kind with which we are acquainted.... We strongly recommend it.’
+
+  SCHOOLMASTER.
+
+‘It is the puzzle as to the history of life on the earth unravelled
+in a manner to interest and enlighten the minds, and to develop the
+observing and reflecting faculties of children.... The results of
+costly and laborious investigations in many different branches of
+science are concentrated in these free and easy lessons or colloquial
+lectures to young children.... Calculated to arouse an interest in all
+but the dullest and most indifferent juvenile minds.... Will be found
+invaluable to teachers and a great help in the rational cultivation of
+the intelligence of the rising generation.’
+
+  SCHOOL BOARD CHRONICLE.
+
+‘The statement of these facts, though made with all the sobriety due to
+a scientific discourse, has all the interest of a story for the young;
+and the narrative, if we mistake not, will interest other readers than
+those for whom it is primarily written. A word of commendation must be
+given to the illustrations, which are exceedingly well drawn.’
+
+  EDUCATIONAL TIMES.
+
+‘To place the “simple truths of science” in rivalry with fairy tales
+and merry picture-books is not so hopeless as at first sight may seem;
+and certainly the simple, attractive style in which the marvels of the
+physical world are here set out must not only interest, but charm every
+bright child of eager intellect. Simplicity is observed to the utmost,
+but it is the simplicity of truth, so that the child is not interested
+at the expense of having afterwards to unlearn what he has read or
+listened to.’
+
+  LIVERPOOL WEEKLY ALBION.
+
+‘Mr. ARTHUR NICOLS has attempted a task which at first sight seems
+extremely difficult, but which he has successfully achieved....
+Children can scarcely help understanding and being interested in the
+wonderful story of the earth’s crust, and of past organic life upon it,
+which he unfolds. There is nothing childish about his style, yet he
+writes with perfect simplicity.... A better book to put into the hands
+of thoughtful children, or for use as a text-book by persons engaged in
+the private tuition of the young, it would be difficult to find.’
+
+  The SCOTSMAN.
+
+‘Facts are stranger than any fancies which emanate from the writers
+of even fairy tales, and when they can be brought home to youthful
+students by ocular demonstrations the facts are invariably preferred to
+the fancies.... The illustrations which adorn the book are well drawn,
+and sufficiently numerous for the purpose.... The Author is a genial
+and reliable guide to a solution of the puzzle of life.’
+
+  ENGLISH MECHANIC.
+
+
+London, LONGMANS & CO.
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  pg 29 Changed: For innumerable agest hese little creatures
+             to: For innumerable ages these little creatures
+
+  pg 91 Changed: Footnote 1: Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several
+                   specimens, mperfect
+             to: Footnote 1: Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several
+                   specimens, imperfect
+
+  pg 131 Changed: lived as that these flin weapons and tools
+              to: lived as that these flint weapons and tools
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75564 ***
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+      The Puzzle of Life; and How It Has Been Put Together. | Project Gutenberg
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+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75564 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs150"><span class="fs70">THE</span><br>
+
+PUZZLE OF LIFE.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent fs80 wsp">
+LONDON: PRINTED BY<br>
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br>
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_f004" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_f004.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption">
+
+<p class="right fs80">
+<em>Frontispiece</em></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp"><em>The Mammoth.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>
+THE PUZZLE OF LIFE;<br>
+
+<span class="fs60">AND</span><br>
+
+<span class="fs70">HOW IT HAS BEEN PUT TOGETHER.</span></h1>
+<br>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp">A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH,<br>
+WITH ITS VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE,<br>
+FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES,<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs70">INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF</span><br>
+<br>
+<em>PRE-HISTORIC MAN, his WEAPONS, TOOLS and WORKS</em>.<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs70">BY</span><br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs120">ARTHUR NICOLS, F.R.G.S.</span><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<em>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by FREDERICK WADDY.</em><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<span class="bold fs90">SECOND EDITION.</span><br>
+<br>
+<br>
+LONDON:<br>
+<span class="fs120">LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</span><br>
+1877.<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs70"><em>All rights reserved.</em></span></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent wsp">
+TO<br>
+<br>
+MY YOUNG FRIENDS<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs120">BEATRIX, GUY, SYLVIA, MAY, <span class="allsmcap">AND</span> GERALD.</span><br>
+<br>
+THE CHILDREN OF<br>
+<br>
+<span class="fs120">GEORGE DU MAURIER.</span><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE<br>
+
+<span class="fs70">TO</span><br>
+
+<span class="fs90">THE SECOND EDITION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> favourable reception accorded to the
+first edition has induced me to give the present
+a more definite educational character.
+Foot-notes are appended, referring to the
+position in the British Museum of all the
+principal antiquities, fossils, and implements
+mentioned in the text; so that the specimens
+can easily be found by any young student
+who wishes, with the book in his hand, to
+make himself familiar with these records of
+past time. This will probably facilitate the
+search for and recognition of specimens by
+the reader.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</span></p>
+
+<p>The additions to the text consist chiefly
+of a more extended account of the deposition
+of chalk and other deep-sea formations,
+founded on the results of the “Challenger”
+and “Tuscarora” expeditions, and a sketch of
+the earthworks of the Ohio mound-builders
+and the stone monuments of Easter Island.
+Examples of pre-historic art and lake-dwellings
+have been added to the illustrations.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+A. N.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="fs80"><span class="smcap">Hampstead</span>: <em>March 1877</em>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE2">PREFACE<br>
+
+<span class="fs70">TO</span><br>
+
+<span class="fs90">THE FIRST EDITION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Having</span> found that children could be interested
+in the history of life upon the Earth, and
+that it appealed forcibly to their understanding,
+I considered that a little book upon the
+subject might give them the taste for more
+extended study in after years. The difficulty
+of treating the, to them, novel conclusions of
+geology, often founded on abstract reasoning,
+in language simple in form yet stating
+clearly the great principles upon which this
+reasoning rests, will probably be apparent on
+every page. Breadth, rather than minuteness,
+has been aimed at, in the belief that a general<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</span>
+view, not overcrowded with details, is likely
+to be the most impressive. Thus, in the
+geological part the leading features of the succession
+of strata have been preserved, but
+no details of systematic classification entered
+into. Similarly, Primeval Man is considered
+mainly with reference to gradual progress
+from a rude to a more civilized condition.
+To have been more explicit, where there is
+still much difference of opinion, would have
+obscured the main facts of the evidence for
+man’s great antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>The illustrations are typical examples of
+the three arbitrary but convenient divisions of
+the history of life—the vegetable, the animal,
+and the human—such as will be most readily
+met with in museums. Slight as this sketch
+is, the liking for it shown by some intelligent
+children, who saw it in manuscript, encouraged
+me to believe that there are many
+others to whom it might prove interesting.</p>
+
+<p>Some acquaintance with the leading facts
+in science is daily becoming more necessary<span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</span>
+to those who aspire to liberal culture, and instruction
+in them is a recognised feature in
+the curriculum of some public and leading
+private schools. Thus, it is hoped that the
+present volume may to some extent serve as a
+text-book without the severity of such a form.
+The best English and foreign authorities have
+been consulted, and other trustworthy sources—as
+papers read before scientific societies—drawn
+upon, bringing the information down to
+the latest time. Though these pages are designed
+for young persons, other readers, perhaps,
+who are not familiar with the subject,
+may find some interest in them if they are
+not deterred by the necessarily simple style.</p>
+
+<p>My thanks are due to Mr. <span class="smcap">H. B. Woodward</span>,
+of the Geological Survey of England
+and Wales, for some valuable suggestions
+made during the progress of the work.</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+A. N.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p class="fs80"><span class="smcap">Hampstead</span>: <em>November 1876</em>.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<table class="autotable lh" style="width: 60%">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"></td>
+<td class="tdr fs70">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Framework of the Puzzle</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Geological Part</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Vegetable Part</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Animal Part</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_77">77</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Human Part</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Conclusion</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<table class="autotable lh">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Mammoth</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_f004"><em>Frontispiece</em></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">I.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Upheaval: Subsidence: Denudation</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p051-1">51</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">II.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Different Kinds of Plants of the Coal Forests</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p065-1">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">III.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Trilobite</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p079">79</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Footprints of Labyrinthodon: Footprints of Birds, (2) with marks of Rain-drops</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p083">83</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">V.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Fish-Reptiles</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p087-1">87</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Bird-Reptiles</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p093-1">93</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Fossils of the Chalk</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p097">97</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Gigantic Irish Stag</span> (<span class="smcap">Cervus Megaceros</span>)</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p108">108</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Megatherium</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p112">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">X.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">1. Flint Arrow-head; 2. Stone Axe in Handle; 3. Flint Knife; 4. Bone Harpoon; 5. Bone Needles; 6. Sceptre made of Horn; 7. Marrow Spoon</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p129">129</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Examples of Pre-historic Drawings</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p135-1">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">Lake-dwellings</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p148">148</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Guadaloupe Human Fossil</span></td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#i_p159">159</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">THE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs150 wsp">PUZZLE OF LIFE.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+<br>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_FRAMEWORK_OF_THE_PUZZLE"><em>THE FRAMEWORK OF THE PUZZLE.</em></h2>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">You</span> must often have looked with wondering
+eyes at this World of ours, and
+asked yourselves questions about it. How
+did it come here? What is it made of?
+How old is it? All of them questions not
+to be answered without a great deal of
+thought and study, and even then not so perfectly
+as we should like. It is easy to say “It
+is here,” and “It is made of earth,” and “It
+surely must be old,” but that will not satisfy
+us. We want to know something more certain
+than this, if possible. We can see that
+a clock goes with wheels, but we are not very
+intelligent people if we do not want to find<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>
+out what makes the clock go. One way of
+finding out is to pull things to pieces, but we
+cannot exactly do this with the World. We
+must think about it, and put together all the
+knowledge we can gain from the outside and
+inside, and from the other Worlds around us,
+which we can see, and when we have done
+this we may get something like answers to
+our questions.</p>
+
+<p>How did it come here? But this is not
+quite the right way of asking the question,
+because the World is never for two moments
+together in the same place. It is travelling
+in a great circle round the Sun at the rate of
+more than sixty thousand miles an hour, and
+has been ever since it was formed. That
+is a wonderful arrangement by which all
+Worlds travel round some other World larger
+than themselves, in greater or less circles,
+and we do not know why it is, though we
+are certain that it is so. The Moon travels
+round us once in about every month, and we
+and the Moon together round the Sun once in
+every year.</p>
+
+<p>Then again, other planets, with their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>
+moons, such as Jupiter, for instance, travel
+round the Sun in much larger circles than our
+World, and take many years to do the journey,
+while Venus, which is nearer the Sun than we
+are, travels in a much smaller circle, and
+takes less time. We do not perceive that
+we are moving so fast because everything we
+see is moving equally fast with us; but there
+is no doubt that we are spinning along at
+sixty thousand miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>If we ask an astronomer how our World
+came into existence, he will tell us that it is
+probably a mass separated from the Sun, that
+it was once red-hot, and that it slowly cooled
+down until animals and plants could live upon
+it. He will tell us besides, that he can see
+mountains and valleys in our Moon, and land
+and sea, snow and clouds, on the planet Mars,
+with his great telescopes. When he thinks
+about the planets and our own World, then
+he believes them to be pieces of some much
+larger World—perhaps the Sun—which now
+travel round the Sun and receive their light
+and heat from it. The World is made of what
+we call “earth,” and it is of this I mean to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
+tell you now—how it was formed, what
+changes have taken place in it, what plants
+and animals have lived upon it, and what
+reasons there are for thinking that it is an
+exceedingly old place, with a long and interesting
+story to tell.</p>
+
+<p>Little was known thirty or forty years ago
+by the most learned men about the age of our
+World, and it was thought that the human
+race had not lived here very long. It was
+indeed known that many large animals, whose
+huge bones have been found, must have
+lived before man came to inhabit the Earth,
+and that even far smaller creatures—such as
+fishes, and crabs, and insects, and shell-fish—most
+probably lived for many generations,
+and died and left their bones and shells in
+the soil long before the first man or the
+first tribes of men came to share the World
+with them. I hope to be able to tell you something
+of the strange and beautiful history of
+all these animals, and of man himself, and
+to show you what reasons there are now for
+thinking that the human race has inhabited
+this Earth for a very long time indeed, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+how all this knowledge has been gained and
+put together piece by piece. It is something
+like the different parts of a puzzle-map,
+which might be scattered all over the house,
+and found at one time or another in different
+places, and at last made up altogether.
+Some parts of the puzzle have not been
+found yet certainly; but so many have been
+collected, and they fit into one another so
+well, that we can begin to see its real shape
+and size. It will perhaps be a very long time
+before some of the missing pieces are found;
+but in the meantime we can go on without
+them, and put the framework together, and no
+doubt in time we shall see what our puzzle,
+the history of life on the Earth, was like.</p>
+
+<p>Before telling you what its parts are, I
+ought to say where many of them have been
+found, and how they are still being looked
+for. They are found <em>upon</em> the ground, <em>under</em>
+it, in caves, in rivers, and in the sea. Since
+railways have been in use a great many tunnels
+have been made, as well as very deep
+cuttings through hills, and some of these are
+several miles long. In this way we have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>
+come to know something of the Earth below
+the surface. Some of these tunnels are bored
+right through high hills and even mountains,
+and the cuttings are deep enough to hide
+high houses if they were put into them.
+While digging these the workmen have
+found many of the parts of our puzzle, which
+are the bones of animals, and fishes, and
+shells, and even smaller things—such as
+insects. These could not possibly have
+been put there by anyone, because they were
+many, many yards below the surface, and,
+until they were dug up, nobody imagined
+that they could be there. Many other things
+besides have been dug out of these places,
+but nearer the surface, such as weapons and
+tools made of flint, and stone, and bone, and
+metal, and pieces of rough crockery, and
+various ornaments, all of which must at
+some time or other have been made and
+used by people very like ourselves. In
+digging canals, too, the same kinds of things
+have been found, and some caves are almost
+filled up with them. We have other means,
+too, of knowing what is under the surface of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+the ground we walk upon. Many of the
+coal-mines are so deep that the Tower of
+London, or St. Paul’s Cathedral, or York
+Minster, or even the Pyramids of Egypt
+could be buried in them! In digging these
+the workmen have had to go through a
+great quantity of earth, sometimes chalk,
+sand, or gravel, or clay or limestone, layer
+upon layer, placed, like a pile of books of
+different kinds and different thicknesses, one
+upon the other, until they have come to
+the coal. In these different layers of earth
+parts of the puzzle have been found, and we
+shall see by-and-by what parts have been
+found in the coal itself. Then again, when
+deep mines are made to get the metals, iron
+and gold and silver, these layers of earth
+have to be dug through; and when the
+beautiful kinds of stone, like marble and limestone,
+are wanted, they must be dug out of
+the sides of the hills, and in doing this still
+more pieces of the puzzle come to hand.
+But there are other places where Nature
+herself seems to have shown us some of
+them without the trouble of searching for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+them. In many parts of the World, by the
+sea, and on the banks of rivers, there are
+cliffs hundreds of feet high, like the chalk
+cliffs at Dover and Ramsgate, and the sandy
+cliffs at Folkestone and on the south coast
+of Devonshire. These cliffs have been cut
+into by the sea very gradually, and a kind
+of wall has been left, and from the sides of
+the cliffs great numbers of the pieces of the
+puzzle, bones, shells, &amp;c., have been collected
+and taken away to museums. But
+the little we can do with our mines and railway
+tunnels is nothing in comparison with
+the work of Nature. In some of the great
+mountain chains—the Andes, the Himalayas,
+and the Alps, for instance—parts of the sides
+of mountains have fallen down, and rents
+many miles long have been left, showing
+what had been buried there in the different
+kinds of soil; and where rivers have cut
+deep, narrow channels through the earth,
+like the Cañons of Colorado, these natural
+miners have turned out more of the parts of
+“the puzzle of life” than we can with all our
+labour.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+
+<p>It will not be easy at first to understand
+all the wonders I have to show you, but, when
+we get further on, you will see them one
+by one, and there will be very little difficulty.
+You know now where these things
+are to be found: principally in the ground
+you walk upon, without knowing all there is
+beneath you. The creatures here are much
+more wonderful than any of the monsters of
+fairy tale or fable, because the works of God
+are greater than the imagination of men who
+have invented the stories of flying dragons
+and griffins, and trees which grew up into the
+skies; but I cannot help thinking that this
+imagination shows what men thought <em>might</em>
+once have been, and we shall see that “truth
+is stranger than fiction.” Creatures really did
+live on this Earth of such strange shapes and
+great size that the imaginations of those
+who wrote the fairy tales did not exaggerate
+much; and, though we know that no flying
+serpents or immense birds like the Roc are
+living now, and that there is no beanstalk
+which grows up into the sky while we are
+asleep, we shall see that there were lizards as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+large as whales, and birds taller than elephants,
+and great sloths stronger than the
+rhinoceros or hippopotamus, and ferns as
+high as oak trees, and mosses as large as
+gooseberry bushes; and that perhaps these
+animals and plants grew much faster than
+they do now, and that their dead bodies form
+a very large part of the earth of our World.
+This is not imagination, and when you go to
+a museum you can see all these wonders for
+yourselves, just as they were taken out of
+the earth; but of course the bones only of
+the animals are there. The flesh has long
+since gone away, and some of the stalks and
+fronds (leaves) only of the ferns remain to
+show us how large they must have been
+when they were alive and growing.</p>
+
+<p>It will be necessary to use a few scientific
+names, most of which are borrowed from the
+Greek and Latin languages, but I will explain
+the meaning of them all, so that they
+will be easily remembered. First of all,
+then, the pieces of the puzzle are called <em>fossils</em>,
+and the name comes from a Latin word
+meaning “dug out;” because they have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+dug out of the ground either by man in making
+railways and mines, or by Nature in the many
+ways in which she works by cutting down
+cliffs and scooping out valleys. These fossils
+are bones of animals and fishes, the skins,
+shells, and wings of insects, and the stalks
+and leaves of plants, some of which have
+lain so very long in the ground that they have
+become as hard and heavy as stone. But
+the shape of them always remains, and the
+moment you look at them you see that they
+once belonged to living creatures.</p>
+
+<p>I shall give you pictures of some of these
+fossils; and no doubt you will be able to find
+some like them in the chalk and sands of the
+seaside—beautiful shells and bones of fishes.
+You may pick these out of the cliffs, and then
+go to the pools of salt water left among the
+rocks by the ebbing tide, and compare your
+fossils with the living shell-fish, and see how
+nearly those inhabitants of the ancient oceans
+resemble the creatures we find now, sporting
+in the water, just as these fossils did when
+the sand and chalk cliffs were under the sea.
+Of course all the bright colours are gone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+from the fossils, for the colour of animals
+fades away soon after they die, and the flesh
+does not last long; but the hard parts—the
+bones and shells—are not easily destroyed,
+because they are made of the same material
+as rocks. And when we look at the fossil
+plants we see the same thing. The colours
+of the green stems and leaves have quite
+faded, but the delicate shapes of the leaves
+and branches, and the grain of the wood, can
+still be seen, and you will have no doubt that
+they once lived and bore flowers and fruit, and
+died, as plants are living and dying every day.</p>
+
+<p>You have got so far now that you know
+what fossils are, and where they may be
+found. You know that they are the small
+and large pieces of the “puzzle of life”—of all
+sorts of different shapes and sizes—and you
+know that they are scattered about the Earth,
+deep down in coal-mines, on the tops of
+mountains, at the bottoms of rivers, in deep
+caves, and under the sea. The patience and
+industry of clever men have been well spent
+in gathering together all they can find, and
+arranging them in museums for our instruction,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+and making a history of them which is
+more wonderful than the Arabian Nights,
+and more beautiful because it is all <em>true</em>.
+And, though you may think it strange that
+I promise to show you creatures more marvellous
+than those of the fairy tales, I shall
+keep that promise faithfully. We shall find
+no Genii with wonderful lamps and magic
+rings, because they never really lived, though
+it gave us much pleasure and amusement to
+read about them; but we shall see what God,
+the greatest Genius of all, has done by means
+of His magicians—the laws of Nature.
+These magicians have built up high mountains
+and dug out valleys, and sent mighty
+rivers sweeping down to the sea, and even
+filled up oceans with sand and chalk, and
+buried ancient forests deep down under sea
+and land. They worked with fire, and air,
+and water; not quickly, but with such
+strength that nothing could resist them, and
+they gradually moulded the Earth into the
+beautiful thing it is, so that</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">In contemplation of created things,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">By steps we may ascend to God.—<cite>Milton.</cite></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+<p>But, lovely as the Earth is, we should not
+perhaps have thought so much of it if there
+had been nothing to discover. We see that
+it has been prepared for us an immensely
+long time ago; and when we know a little,
+we want to search further and find out what
+the whole plan of Creation is, so far as we
+can. You will be surprised when you know
+how many signs of past life there are around
+you—many more than you can see with the
+eye. The Earth is one great burying-place
+of creatures which have passed away. You
+are walking over their dead and fossil bodies
+at almost every step. They are built into
+the walls of our houses, and there are
+millions of them in some of the commonest
+stones of the pavement. Those round,
+smooth pebbles, called flint stones, which we
+pick out of the gravel walks, were once partly
+such soft tender things as sponges; but time
+has hardened them, and they have been
+rolled together in seas and rivers by the
+always moving water until they have become
+quite different to look at from the rough blue
+flints they were when they were washed out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+of the chalk beds. When you are walking
+along the sands of some seacoasts, you are
+treading on little specks of these small flints
+which have been ground down fine in that
+great mill, the ocean. The sponges, then,
+did some part in the building up of the
+Earth. The very chalk you draw with is
+composed of the shells of sea-animals. Your
+slates and slate pencils were once a fine mud
+at the bottom of the sea, since become so
+hard that it is used for covering the roofs of
+our houses, and in this mud lived myriads
+of small shell-fish which have sometimes left
+their frail houses in the slate beds to tell us
+how they were made. That slate is the
+hardened mud of an old sea bottom, there is
+no doubt at all.</p>
+
+<p>There are many other things in common
+use which show us the life that was.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps you did not know that coals are
+<em>compressed plants</em>, and that we are now
+burning the vegetation of the past time!
+But these will be described in their right
+places by-and-by, and you will see how
+certain it is that some of the commonest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+things we use were living creatures and
+graceful plants.</p>
+
+<p>Here is “the framework” of the puzzle,
+and I think you will agree with me that we
+shall have pleasure in putting it together
+with all the queerly-shaped pieces we shall
+find in the following chapters. We have
+fossil plants to show us what grew upon the
+Earth, fossil bones to tell us what animals
+lived here, and thousands of different kinds
+of fossil shells and fishes to show us that
+the seas in the long past time were crowded
+with life; and besides, though there are no
+written histories of the men whom we shall
+read about, they, too, have left many things
+which they used in the caves where they lived
+and in their graves, to make us feel certain
+that they were some of the oldest people that
+ever lived. With all these things to help us, it
+will be strange if we cannot make out a great
+deal of the history of life upon our Earth.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_GEOLOGICAL_PART"><em>THE GEOLOGICAL PART.</em></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">You</span> will have learned from other books
+something about the size and shape of our
+World: for instance, that it is a great round
+body, or rather more like an orange, a little
+flatter one way than the other, and about
+8,000 miles through, from one side to the
+other, and that it turns round once in every
+twenty-four hours; but I have only to tell
+you now what it is made of. The material
+is called rock, earth, or soil; and there are
+many kinds of it, such as granite, gravel,
+clay, sand, chalk, mud, and so on; and we
+shall see that many of these different soils
+contain different fossils.</p>
+
+<p>It is supposed that a very long time
+passed while these were being laid one upon
+another, and before many plants or animals
+lived here, and there are good reasons for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+thinking that underneath these soils the
+Earth is very hot, perhaps in a melting state,
+because we know that volcanoes like Vesuvius
+and Ætna throw out flame and smoke and
+lava, which is melted earth and rock; and
+that this lava has run down the sides of the
+mountains for miles, in a great stream of
+liquid material, and covered up and destroyed
+whole villages and towns. You have heard
+of earthquakes, when the ground shakes and
+cracks, and houses are thrown down, as they
+have often been in Spain, Italy, and South
+America. This convinces us that the inside
+of the earth must be very different from the outside.
+Two or three years ago Mount Vesuvius
+was boiling up, and the people of Naples feared
+that it would throw out some of the terrible
+lava and red-hot cinders, and burn up their
+vineyards and perhaps injure their city; and
+during the last two or three years many
+people have been killed by earthquakes in
+South America. These things seldom happen
+in the North of Europe, and when they
+do they are only slightly felt, and people are
+not killed, neither are houses thrown down.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+Still, this shows that there must be some
+great force underneath us, and very much
+heat. We see nothing of this when we
+look upon the green fields, and we should
+scarcely think it possible if there were not
+histories about these eruptions, as they are
+called. But when I tell you that I have felt
+the Earth tremble, and seen fire rushing out
+from the top of a high mountain whose sides
+were covered with snow, you will understand
+how real it is—though it may seem so strange.</p>
+
+<p>People at one time liked to fancy that
+powerful spirits lived in volcanoes and made
+them their workshops: but we know better
+now.</p>
+
+<p>Well, the interior of the Earth is evidently
+very different from the part we live upon;
+and it is the outside we have to think about
+now, which would be dreadfully cold if the
+sun did not shine upon it, though the inside
+is so hot.</p>
+
+<p>I have called this “the Geological Part,”
+and the name Geological comes from two
+Greek words meaning “a talk about the earth;”
+but now you know it in its English dress it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+will be easy to recollect it. Geology is then the
+study of the many kinds of rocks and fossils
+which makeup our World, but we must know
+something of the way in which they are placed.</p>
+
+<p>You may have noticed, if you have made
+many journeys to different parts of England
+or Wales, that the rocks or soils are very
+different in various places. Sometimes we
+find numerous chalk-pits, as in parts of Kent,
+or Sussex; if we go into Devonshire we may
+notice the very red colour of the soil and of the
+cliffs, especially near Sidmouth, Dawlish, and
+Teignmouth; in North Wales we find great
+quarries and hills of slate; while around
+London we see a great deal of clay used for
+making bricks, and called the London clay,
+as well as many pits in gravel so useful for
+making paths and mending roads, and in Kent
+and Sussex chalk cliffs and hills are common.</p>
+
+<p>Now after studying these various rocks
+all over our country, we find that there is a
+certain regular order in which they are found;
+some have been made a long time before
+others, and while most kinds contain some
+fossils, those found in the oldest rocks are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+much less like the living plants and animals
+than the fossils we find in the newer rocks.</p>
+
+<p>But you will want to know how it is that
+we can tell that one rock is older than
+another, when both appear at the surface of
+the earth. It would take a long time to
+make sure of this for ourselves, but it will be
+enough to say that the various cliffs, quarries,
+and railway-cuttings often show one kind of
+rock resting upon another, and these always
+occur in a certain order. Thus we never find
+the Chalk resting on the London Clay, but we
+constantly find the London Clay resting on
+the Chalk. And this is proved in another
+way, by deep well-borings. Underneath
+London many wells have been carried down
+right through the London Clay, and if only
+continued deep enough they always reach
+the Chalk. In the same way, the order of
+the other rocks has been ascertained in
+different parts of the country, by examining
+all the pits and quarries, and cliffs and cuttings,
+with the help of what knowledge can
+be obtained from deep mines and wells.</p>
+
+<p>You will now begin to wonder why the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+older rocks should appear at the surface. I
+have told you about earthquakes, and you
+will find that many dreadful earthquakes
+must in former times have ravaged our
+country. The reason why the old rocks
+come to the surface is because they have
+been lifted up sometimes violently, but more
+often very slowly. And the newer rocks
+which formerly rested on them have very
+often been quite washed away, either by the
+sea or by rivers and little streams which formerly
+acted upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose then we take six books, some
+thick and some thin, and pile them up together
+on the table, the lowest being a good
+thick one. The lowest we will call granite,
+the next slate, the third sandstone, the fourth
+coal, the fifth chalk, and the sixth the London
+clay. These will represent some of the
+principal kinds of earths, and you can fancy
+many more with other names coming between
+them; but the London clay can never be
+below the granite nor the chalk below the
+coal, for the great coal beds were formed long
+before the chalk and clay. They generally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
+come in much the same order as we have
+named them, hard rocks like granite at the
+bottom, and softer earths, like sandstone, chalk
+and clay, a long way above them. But we do
+not always find all these earths in one place
+even if we dig ever so deeply, though the
+granite would always be found at the bottom
+if we went deep enough.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the granite and other old rocks
+have been pushed through the upper layers
+by some great force, and have broken
+them and risen above them in magnificent
+mountain chains, like those of the Andes in
+South, and the Rocky Mountains in North
+America, the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland,
+the Grampians in Scotland, and the Cornish
+mountains in England. We can easily suppose
+that the lowest of our books (the granite
+book) has been pushed upwards by some
+great force from below, and parts of it broken
+through the others, and raised high above
+them; and this is what has actually been
+done with real rocks. And as this kind of
+upheaval has taken place at different periods
+of the earths history, we find that granites
+have come to the surface at different times.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p>When the layers are thus broken through
+they are often tilted up on end and tumbled
+about in confusion. But where there has
+been no disturbance like this, they generally
+rest evenly upon one another in their proper
+order.</p>
+
+<p>Granite, and rocks of the same kind, are
+not in the least like chalk, or clay, or even
+sandstone, and when once you have seen any
+of these you will not be likely to mistake it
+for the others. Granite is excessively hard,
+and has a beautiful appearance when polished,
+with a number of brilliant white and some
+dark specks in it. It is used for paving the
+streets of towns, for which purpose it is cut
+into oblong blocks, and for the pillars of fine
+buildings. Sometimes it is dark brown,
+sometimes reddish, but generally a bluish
+grey. This rock is composed of a great
+quantity of crystals, and for this reason it is
+thought it must have been melted at one
+time by intense heat in the earth, and afterwards
+slowly cooled. Chalk is very different,
+and sandstone, though it is also hard, not in
+the least like granite.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+
+<h3>HOW THE ROCKS WERE FORMED.</h3>
+
+<p>What I have just said is about all that we
+know of the formation of the oldest and hardest
+granite rocks: but there is something going
+on now which confirms the belief that the
+materials of which they are made were melted
+together by a greater heat than we can make
+in our furnaces for melting iron; for I should
+tell you that it is easier to melt iron and
+copper than granite rocks. Volcanoes often
+throw out melted earths which when cooled
+appear to be made of much the same materials
+as these granites.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SANDSTONE.</h3>
+
+<p>But we know more of the manner of the
+formation of sandstone. This rock is composed
+of rounded grains of sand just like that
+we find upon the sea shore. If you take a
+handful of this sand and squeeze it tightly,
+it will keep together a little while. Now
+suppose a quantity of this sand was pressed
+by a very great weight—the weight of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>
+large hill for instance—after many years the
+grains would stick firmly together, and become
+a sort of stone. It is in this way the
+sandstones must have been formed, and perhaps
+heat helped the work, though not so
+great a heat as melted the granite. The
+sand, after it had been washed upon the sea
+shore, became gradually covered with other
+earths hundreds of feet thick, and the immense
+weight above it pressed it into stone:
+but you may imagine how very long a time
+it took to do this. Sandstones are used for
+building, but they do not last very long; the
+frost makes little cracks in them and they
+soon crumble away to the grains of sand of
+which they were made. Several fossils are
+found in some of these sandstones, which
+have been formed at many different periods
+of the earth’s history.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CHALK.</h3>
+
+<p>You have seen those high cliffs of chalk
+along the south coast of England, perhaps,
+and you have wondered what that beautiful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
+white earth was, and how it came there. It
+is found in many parts of the world, and
+the south and south-east of England are to a
+great extent composed of it. The material
+is called by chemists carbonate of lime. It
+is almost entirely made up of minute shells
+called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">foraminifera</i>, from two Latin words
+which mean that there are many openings or
+chambers in their shells, and there are many
+beautiful fossils called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ammonites</i> imbedded in
+the chalk. These are shell-fish, two or three
+inches, and sometimes a foot across, and their
+shape is very like that of the young leaves of
+the common fern before it has opened in the
+spring.</p>
+
+<p>Millions of these tiny foraminifera are
+living now in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific
+oceans, and when they die their shells sink
+to the bottom and form a greyish mud, something
+like chalk.</p>
+
+<p>When H.M.S. “Challenger” was sent out
+in the year 1873, to find out what was at the
+bottom of the deepest seas of the World,
+great interest was felt in the expedition,
+because we were sure that we should learn<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>
+something about the manner in which some
+of the rocks were formed.</p>
+
+<p>We knew that the whole of the beds of
+the present seas must be receiving the washings
+of the rivers and the bodies of many
+fishes and animals, and that the rocks of the
+future must be forming down there by these
+accumulations. Long lines were let down from
+the ship with a dredge at the end, and thus
+parts of the bottom of the sea were brought
+up and carefully examined. It was found
+that the washings, stones, clay, and mud of
+the land were carried hundreds of miles out
+to sea, and laid upon the bottom. But in the
+deeper parts, where the Alps would be almost
+covered—there was a fine grey mud composed
+almost entirely of the shells of the
+little foraminifera, and this, no doubt, is the
+chalk of future times, or perhaps limestone
+of a harder kind. Deeper, too, than where
+this grey mud is found, there is a reddish
+mud, exceedingly fine and soft. We cannot
+exactly say yet whether this is formed from
+the remains of shell-fish; but it is, at all
+events, very like the clay of the land, and in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+some future time will most likely become like
+that stiff mud we know so well. So that
+even the materials for bricks are being made
+now, and perhaps when all those hundreds
+of islands scattered about the Pacific Ocean
+are joined into one great Continent, this red
+mud will be raised and made use of for building
+the houses of new peoples and nations.</p>
+
+<p>When we see this going on now, of course
+it is very easy to conclude that the chalk, a
+great deal of which is above the sea now,
+must have been formed in the same way at the
+bottom of an ancient ocean, and afterwards
+raised by the same kind of upward force which
+made the granite break through other earths.</p>
+
+<p>If we did not know that the same cause was
+at work now, and that the same kinds of shell-fish
+were living and laying down new beds of
+chalk under the sea, we should not know
+how to account for the quantities of chalk in
+the world. For innumerable ages these little
+creatures have thus been paving the floor of
+the ocean with their dead bodies, and you
+may suppose that countless millions of them
+must have lived and died! In some of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+chalks the shells of the foraminifera can be
+quite distinctly seen with a microscope, and
+when these are compared with the shells of
+living ones, they are seen to be almost exactly
+alike. Next time you pass through one of the
+railway cuttings through the chalk in going to
+Brighton, or Ramsgate, or Dover, remember
+that those high cliffs were built up by these
+Liliputian giants under the sea, and you may
+think of the chalk as “foraminifera earth”.</p>
+
+
+<h3>COAL.</h3>
+
+<p>You see this black shining substance
+almost every day, and you know it is dug up
+from very deep pits where the poor miners are
+often killed by explosions of gas escaping
+from it. But it is as well to know what
+it is and how it comes to be so useful to us.
+In the language of chemistry it is called
+“carbon”, and a great writer has given it the
+poetical name of “compressed sunlight”. But
+you will ask how sunlight could possibly
+get into a deep mine, and how it could be
+compressed there. You will see that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
+explanation is really quite simple by-and-by.
+This coal was once above ground, and was
+a splendid forest of waving palm-trees, and
+ferns, and gigantic mosses, as you will see by
+the pictures of the fossils of them.</p>
+
+<p>Many of the animals and plants of past
+times were giants compared to those living
+now, of the same species or kind, and many
+of the plants of the present time are dwarfs
+to those of the same kind which formed the
+coal beds. Many generations of trees must
+have grown and died, and others must have
+sprung up, and so on, until beds of them,
+some ten, others twenty, or even thirty feet
+thick, were formed. Here, buried in the
+coal, are the stems, leaves, bark, roots, fruit,
+and seeds of these trees, and we can have no
+doubt that almost the whole of the coal is
+composed of them. You must not expect to
+find the shapes of these in every piece of coal
+you may happen to look at, because most of
+it has been greatly changed by the great
+weight and pressure upon it, and the length
+of time: but it is certainly all the same substance—wood
+turned into coal. The fossil<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+plants of the coal are of course entirely
+black, but there is no mistake about their
+having once been living plants.</p>
+
+<p>You will ask perhaps how the coal came
+to be buried so deep. It is not so always,
+being sometimes at the surface. But just as
+the granite has been pushed up through the
+other rocks, so has the coal in some places
+been uplifted and in others has sunk down.
+It was often covered up by other earths to
+a great depth, after the trees which composed
+it had died; but where it is now at
+the surface these newer earths have been
+afterwards worn away. When the sun shone
+upon these coal trees they took its warmth
+and light into their stems and leaves, for they
+could not live without, and this made them
+grow so fast and become so large that it is
+not untrue to call coal “compressed sunlight.”
+Charcoal is in some respects so like coal that
+it would seem to you at once that they were
+probably the same material. Charcoal is
+simply burnt wood, and when the coal forests
+had died down, and when these beds sank
+down beneath other layers the pressure and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+heat together turned the wood and leaves
+into a hard mass like charcoal in colour, but
+heavier and more solid, and just enough of the
+stems and leaves have been left to enable
+us to know with certainty that coal was once
+wood.</p>
+
+<p>We light our fires now and drive our
+steam-engines with the heat of the sun which
+shone upon the coal forests, and has been
+stored up for many thousands of years in the
+Earth, to be brought out once more to give
+us light and warmth.</p>
+
+
+<h3>CLAY AND MUD.</h3>
+
+<p>While the ancient forests were growing
+up to form the coal beds, and the foraminifera
+were slowly building up the chalk, as I
+have explained, the Earth was covered with
+water in some places which are now dry land,
+and the sea now flows over parts of the
+World which were once the habitations of
+plants and animals. These great changes
+have left their marks upon many a mountain
+side, and many an old river or sea bed has
+become filled up. A map of Europe during<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+the chalk period would show that the places
+where Paris, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin
+now are were then under the ocean; but
+since then these places have been lifted up,
+and mud, clay, and gravel swept over the
+chalk in many places by the action of new
+rivers and seas. Water, you perceive, has
+had a great deal to do with these changes,
+and indeed it is one of Nature’s most powerful
+tools, for it can wash down rocks and
+cliffs and cut its way in rivers for thousands
+of miles over the Earth’s surface. It carries
+down mud, and clay, and gravel, and this
+soil, which has been named alluvium, is one
+of the most interesting of all to us, because it
+contains the bones of the immense animals we
+shall talk about presently, as well as those of
+the oldest races of men with their weapons
+and ornaments.</p>
+
+<p>The mud age, and we are in the mud
+and gravel age now, belongs to what is called
+the Tertiary period, and we shall see that
+this age has lasted a very long time already,
+so long that though it is still going on, the
+most extraordinary animals have lived and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+died, and not one of them is now left alive.
+Still the same washing and cutting of water is
+going on which buried their bones in swamps,
+and bogs, and river caves, and may perhaps
+carry away some of the bones of us who are
+living now, to be found ages afterwards by
+future generations who will read our history
+in these silent witnesses, as we read the history
+of the tree ferns and foraminifera in the coal
+and the chalk.</p>
+
+<p>The present age of the World’s history
+is the Mud age, or, as we shall call it in future,
+the Tertiary period, and I think you will agree
+with me when I come to describe it, that it
+contains the most interesting of all the pieces
+of “the puzzle of life.”</p>
+
+<p>The earth of the Tertiary period is very
+different from a great many of the older
+earths. Clay, mud, and gravel are the washings
+only of the older rocks, the fine particles
+which have been worn off from them
+by frost and water and carried down by
+rivers and left in large beds, and sometimes
+they have a good deal of decayed wood and
+weeds mixed with them. Here are found<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
+the bones of the great animals which were so
+much larger and stronger than those of the
+same kind living now, or any that lived
+before them.</p>
+
+
+<h3>UPHEAVAL AND DEPRESSION.</h3>
+
+<p>These two words are so often used in
+books on geology that we shall not be able
+to get on without knowing their meaning. We
+have seen that the rocks have been formed
+in a certain way—some by heat, some by
+water, and some by dead forests—and
+that they lie over one another in pretty
+regular order. But this order has sometimes
+been disturbed and the layers have been
+tumbled about among one another very
+much. In some places the older rocks, such
+as granite, slate, and sandstone, have been
+pushed up through those above, and in
+others the coal has sunk down and been
+covered with thick layers of chalk, sand, and
+mud. When the force below pushes a layer
+up through the others it is called <em>upheaval</em>,
+and when a layer sinks down it is called
+<em>depression</em>, or <em>subsidence</em>. Both these actions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+are going on now in different parts of the
+Earth. A great part of Sweden, Norway,
+and Denmark, of Spitzbergen, Siberia, and
+the north of America, is being slowly raised
+higher above the sea, as we know by the
+height their old sea beaches now are above
+the water; while part of the shore of
+America opposite to Europe and also the
+south of Greenland is slowly sinking down,
+as we know by the remains of land animals
+and trees which are now covered by the
+tide; and at many places on the coast
+of India this subsidence is also going on.
+Nearer home, too, there is an example
+of it in the island of Guernsey. All round
+the coast of this island, like that of Jersey, are
+found tree trunks and other remains of old
+forest land beneath the water. Old histories
+refer to this as dry land; and if a map
+of it made in 1406 is correct, this land must
+have sunk about 150 feet since that time.</p>
+
+<p>Thus we can see, even at the present
+time, the very same changes which have
+worked upon our Earth for innumerable
+ages. It is now easy to understand how the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+forests which must have grown above in the
+air have, after a long time, sunk down to a
+great depth, and been turned into coal, and
+covered with the sediment, sand, gravel,
+and chalk from the seas which afterwards
+flowed over the places where they grew.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the rocks by the sea shore are
+cut into terraces or steps by the constant
+wear of the water, and when we see these
+water marks far above the present level of the
+sea we know that the land must have been
+lifted up gradually above the sea. There are
+many such terraces in Norway. To prove
+whether this is so marks have been cut upon
+rocks at a measured height above the sea,
+and after some years these marks have been
+noticed to have been raised much above
+the water by the “upheaval” of the earth at
+that place.</p>
+
+<p>Generally this change of level has taken
+place gradually, and the greatest work in
+moving the layers of earth and displacing
+them has been very slow. But in some places
+violent and sudden shocks have happened,
+tearing up the rocks and piling them up in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
+heaps; and now and then islands have suddenly
+appeared in the sea and vanished out
+of sight completely in a short time. Islands
+have thus come up in the Mediterranean Sea
+within the memory of man. In the year 1831
+the island of Julia suddenly appeared near the
+coast of Sicily, and since the year 186 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> no
+less than three islands have started up in the
+bay of the island of Santorin. In this century
+islands have appeared among the Azores, the
+Indian Archipelago, the Philippines, the
+Moluccas, and on the coast of Kamtschatka
+and other places. Some of these have appeared
+suddenly, others slowly, and they no
+doubt have been raised by a great force from
+below.</p>
+
+<p>You will see now how easy it is to account
+for the changes of the places of the layers of
+rock. The same thing is going on now which
+has been going on throughout all time, only
+perhaps with more energy formerly than now,
+making mountains, islands, and continents,
+raising up a large tract of land in one place
+and sinking an island or a sea shore in
+another.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>These changes have been of great use to
+us too. Suppose all England had been covered
+with coal or slate, we should not have been
+able to grow anything! As it is we have
+sand and gravel in one county, chalk in
+another, slate or granite in another, and coal
+down below in several, and we can grow a
+great variety of plants on all these different
+soils. We have to thank “upheaval” and
+“depression” for this. The force which is
+always working below us has turned up the
+different soils like a gigantic plough, and
+brought some to the top and covered others,
+so that instead of having to dig down deeper
+than ever we have yet, we have only to go
+from one county to another to find the
+different rocks. We know that we could not
+get at the coal in Sussex without going down
+an unknown depth through the chalk and
+other earths, but we dig for it in the North
+of England, where we know its depth below
+the surface.</p>
+
+<p>I will try now to give you some idea of
+the way in which the rocks come in their
+order, or the succession of formations as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+geologists call it. If we started to walk from
+Wales to London the rocks we should pass
+over would be—slate and flagstones in
+Wales, and going on towards London, limestone,
+old red sandstone, more limestones,
+coal beds, new red sandstone, oolite, greensand,
+chalk, and last London clay. We
+might not always find each of these near the
+surface, but they would be found to be the
+principal rocks on a line between Wales and
+London, the oldest being in Wales and the
+newest or most recent as we get nearer
+London. That word “oolite” which I used
+comes from two Greek words meaning “roe”
+and “stone,” because the rock is composed of
+little rounded grains of a chalky substance
+shaped like the hard roe of a fish, or like
+sago before it is cooked.</p>
+
+<p>If you look at the following table you will
+see how the principal rocks are placed one
+upon the other, beginning at the lowest or
+oldest at the bottom and going up to the
+newest at the top of the table, and on the
+right hand side I have written the names of
+the principal fossils which each kind of earth
+contains.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp">TABLE OF THE SUCCESSION OF FORMATIONS.</p>
+
+<table class="autotable fs90">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="4">TERTIARY, or Upper Rocks</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bt bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Peat bogs and caves</td>
+<td class="tdl">Fossil Man, with stone implements, &amp;c., mammoth, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, Irish stag, cave lion, &amp;c.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">River-mud and brickearth, gravels, and boulder clay (alluvium)</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Crag of Eastern Counties</td>
+<td class="tdl">Numerous shell-fish, mastodon</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bb bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">London clay, &amp;c.</td>
+<td class="tdl">Turtles, crocodiles, shell-fish</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="13">SECONDARY, or Middle Rocks</td>
+<td class="tdc bt bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="3">Cretaceous</td>
+<td class="tdc bl bt"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Chalk (with and without flints)</td>
+<td class="tdl">Foraminifera, &amp;c., sponges, corals, sea-urchins, shell-fish (Belemnites, Ammonites, &amp;c.), fishes</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Greensand and gault</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bb bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bb"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Wealden clay, &amp;c.</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bt bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="8">Oolites</td>
+<td class="tdc bl bt"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Portland stone</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Kimmeridge clay</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Coral rag</td>
+<td class="tdl">Immense reptiles, the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Megalosaurus, Pterodactyl, &amp;c.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Oxford clay</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Cornbrash and forest marble</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Great oolite</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Fullers’ earth</td>
+<td class="tdl">Animals allied to the opossum and kangaroo</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc bb bl"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bb"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Lower oolite</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Lias clay and limestone</td>
+<td class="tdl">Cycads and other plants</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdl">New red marl and sandstone</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="7">PRIMARY, or Lower Rocks</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bt"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Coal</td>
+<td class="tdl">Ferns, club-mosses, a few firs, calamites, &amp;c., in great abundance</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Millstone grit</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Mountain limestone</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Old red sandstone</td>
+<td class="tdl">Numerous corals, shell-fish, trilobites, fishes, &amp;c.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Silurian limestones and slates</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Cambrian slates</td>
+<td class="tdl">The Laurentian rocks contain the oldest known fossil, the Eozöon (or “life-dawn animal”)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bb"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Laurentian rocks</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc" rowspan="3">IGNEOUS, or Volcanic Rocks</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bt"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Greenstone, basalt</td>
+<td class="tdl">Of various ages (no fossils)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Porphyry</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+<td class="tdc bl bb"></td>
+<td class="tdl">Granite, &amp;c.</td>
+<td class="tdc"></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>
+
+<p>If you read this table upwards from the
+bottom you will notice that life began in a
+very small way with Eozöon (the “life-dawn
+animal”), that fishes appeared afterwards, that
+the wonderful forests of the coal period then
+grew and were covered up by other rocks
+and pressed into solid coal, that numbers of
+great crocodile-like animals lived all through
+the oolite time, how the deep wide beds
+of chalk were laid down by humble foraminifera,
+and when we get to the recent
+newest beds of gravel, mud, sand, clay, &amp;c.,
+the sweepings by water of the older rocks
+ground down by ages of wear and tear, we
+have the mammoth, mastodon, megatherium,
+and other great vegetable eaters, and lastly
+Man himself with his simple weapons of
+stone, bone, and horn—our early forefathers.</p>
+
+<p>You must always keep in mind that the
+greatest of these changes have taken place
+very slowly. Mountains have been raised,
+and whole continents have been sunk by
+movements so slow that if the hands of a
+clock went only once round the dial in a year
+the hand would go faster than these mountains<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+have risen or the continents sunk. Almost
+always whenever there has been sudden and
+<em>violent</em> action it has been near volcanoes or
+during earthquakes; but these things, terrible
+as they are to the people living near, disturb
+only a very small part of the surface, and
+such violence neither buried the coal beds
+nor raised the slate hills of Wales. Many of
+the small effects of the internal force of the
+earth have been sudden and violent, but the
+greatest and grandest have been slower than
+anything we can imagine.</p>
+
+<p>If this had not been so, we should not
+find fossil shells just as they sank quietly to
+the bottom of ancient seas, quite undisturbed.
+We should not find delicate ferns and insects
+with all their breakable parts perfectly preserved,
+and as lightly laid as if you had
+put them away carefully in a cabinet upon
+cotton wool. Yet many of these have sunk
+down hundreds of feet below the open air
+where they <em>must</em> have lived. We find the
+ripple marks of the waves on old sandstones,
+and even the prints of the feet of birds and
+animals as they walked upon that rock when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
+it was soft sand, and the little pits made
+by rain-drops on the moist earth. All this
+speaks of stillness, and gentle movement, no
+violence. So slowly and softly have these
+rocks settled down, that we can read in them
+the history of the life that was. But if there
+had been any sudden and rough movement
+all these fossils might have been broken up
+and we should have had nothing but fragments,
+and the “puzzle of life” could never
+have been put together. Nature’s forces are
+immense, but they work slowly, irresistibly,
+and majestically.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE ICE AGE.</h3>
+
+<p>We have seen now what the principal rocks
+are made of and the way in which their places
+have been changed by upheaval and depression.
+Water, as we know, has been at work
+and has done great things in <em>all</em> ages of the
+World’s history. I have called it “one of
+Nature’s most powerful tools,” and when we
+look at the quantity of chalk alone that there
+is in the world, and remember that this was all
+laid down in water, and perhaps a great part<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+of its lime carried down by rivers to the seas
+where it settled to the bottom, after the
+corals and small shell-fish had worked it into
+their bodies, we are right in thinking water
+a great Magician indeed. Why, even so
+small a river as the Thames carries down to
+the sea every year as much dissolved earth
+as would make a good large hill; and what
+must such rivers as the Nile, the Amazon,
+the Mississippi, and the great Chinese rivers
+do! There must have been gigantic rivers,
+too, in the old times, or else it would have
+been impossible that the deep sandstone and
+slate beds could have been formed; for these
+are all laid down by the washing away of
+earth in water.</p>
+
+<p>Ice, which is only solid water, has also
+been a powerful tool in shaping the surface
+of the Earth, but it has not been <em>always</em> at
+work as water has. Ice now covers only a
+comparatively small part of the globe near the
+north and south poles, and mountains like
+those in Switzerland; but by watching what
+ice is doing now in these places we are able
+to be certain that there has been a time when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+it covered Scotland, Cumberland, Wales,
+Sweden and Norway, and nearly all North
+America. In watching the great “rivers of
+ice,” called glaciers, in the Alps, for instance,
+we see that they slip down from the mountains
+slowly, creeping on year by year, and
+bringing with them pieces of rock and stones.
+We see also where they have melted that they
+have been grinding the rocks beneath them
+with their great weight, and have cut grooves
+into, and scraped and polished the hardest
+granite. The stones underneath the glaciers
+have been pressed so heavily upon the rocks
+that they have left deep marks, and we find
+the same kinds of marks and heaps of stones
+in many mountains where there are no
+glaciers now. There are other things too
+which convince us that a great ice sheet
+spread over almost the whole of Great Britain.
+When the huge icebergs break away from
+the frozen shores of Greenland and North
+America, they often have frozen into their
+ice large blocks of rock, sand, gravel, &amp;c.,
+and when they drift into the warmer seas of
+the south they melt, and of course these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+blocks or “boulders,” as they are called, sink
+to the bottom. Just the same kind of boulders
+are found in many parts of the world,
+where icebergs never come now, and as they
+are of a different rock from that on which
+they lie, they must have been brought there
+somehow. We naturally suppose then that
+they were brought by icebergs. Sometimes
+boulders of granite have been found thus
+among clay, many miles from where there
+are any granite rocks on the surface, and
+there can be no doubt that they were originally
+frozen into an iceberg, which floated away
+with them and when it melted left them so far
+from their native place. In many of the midland
+and eastern counties once floated these
+icebergs, dropping the stones and boulders
+which they brought away from the Welsh,
+Cumberland, and Scottish mountains.</p>
+
+<p>The climate of the earth must have been
+fearfully cold when our country was covered
+with ice, just as Greenland is now. Geologists
+suppose that there must have been more
+than one age of ice, and that between these
+ages the climate of the world was pretty<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+much the same as at present, although it is
+certain that there were periods when England
+was much warmer, because many of
+the fossil plants could not have grown in a
+cold climate.</p>
+
+<p>You will want to know whether there
+were any land animals living during the ice
+periods. It is impossible to be quite certain,
+but it is most likely that the mammoth was
+living both before and during the <em>last</em> ice age,
+because its bones have been found among
+the earths brought down by the glaciers.</p>
+
+<p>I have said all you will be likely to remember
+at present about the nature of the
+different rocks, but it will help you to understand
+better how they have been laid one
+upon the other, and how they have been
+moved and broken by upheaval and subsidence,
+if you look at the drawings on
+page <a href="#i_p051-1">51</a>.</p>
+
+
+<h3>DENUDATION.</h3>
+
+<p>It has often happened that some of the
+harder and older rocks, like granite and
+slate, have pushed themselves through those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+earths lying above them, and then the sea
+or a great river has washed away all the
+earths from one side of the rock. The rain,
+too, falling for thousands of years, has swept
+them down into the valleys and mixed them
+together. This is called denudation, or
+“laying bare” the harder rocks by washing
+the softer ones away from them. Those
+beds of pebbles on the sea shore also have
+been battering against the rocks for ages and
+very gradually wearing them away, as you
+can see if you watch the stones being
+driven into and sucked out of holes and
+cracks by every wave. Thus, both the
+loose stones and the solid rocks get polished
+and ground away, and Nature is always
+destroying and making again by turns. If
+this destruction went on continually without
+any raising of the land to make up for it, the
+surface of the whole Earth would in time
+become level; but old sea beds are always
+being slowly raised above the water and
+prepared for the growth of plants and the
+habitation of animals.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p051-1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p051-1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><em>Upheaval.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p051-2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p051-2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><em>Subsidence.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p051-3" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p051-3.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><em>Denudation.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>If you watch the little rills of water on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>any rainy day, trickling down a hill, or the
+springs which bubble up at the foot of cliffs
+on the sea shore, you will see an example of
+denudation in a small way. The earth is
+washed off the surface here and there, and
+carried down and laid up in banks in some
+places, and the harder ground underneath is
+laid bare. Little beds of stones are collected
+in one place, and sticks and straws and such
+light things in another, and this is just what
+has been done on a large scale in mountain
+regions, all over the world for many centuries.</p>
+
+<p>In the uppermost sketch on page <a href="#i_p051-1">51</a> you
+will see how the granite has been lifted
+up with the layers of other earth along its
+sides, and afterwards even layers have been
+deposited above; in the second there has
+been a great crack in the land, and a great
+mass of rock has subsided, and the hollow has
+become filled up in time with clay, and mould,
+and rich soil, so that some one has built a
+house and made a garden on it; in the third
+the river has cut a gorge in rocks which were
+once continuous from cliff to cliff, wearing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
+away the softer earths more easily than the
+harder. If the Earth was cut into in different
+places we should find the rocks arranged in a
+very similar way to that in the three sketches.</p>
+
+
+<h3>BOILING SPRINGS, ETC.</h3>
+
+<p>In several different countries there are
+very strange sights, but scarcely anything
+is more astonishing than the fountains of
+boiling water which shoot up out of the
+ground. There are a good many of them
+not far from us, in Iceland, and many
+hundreds in Wyoming in America, and they
+are called “geysers.” Steam and boiling
+water, and sometimes mud, are thrown up by
+these natural fountains to a height of 200 feet—as
+high as the top of the spire of a church.
+The water must come from a great depth
+in the ground—perhaps many thousand feet
+down—where the heat is intense. This water
+springing up with clouds of snow-white steam,
+and falling all round in showers, has a most
+beautiful appearance. These geysers now and
+then throw out very little water, just bubbling
+up above the ground, and then travellers boil<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+eggs and chickens and such things in them,
+and have a pic-nic near them. It is impossible
+to say how long they have lasted,
+but we know from history that some have
+been spouting out water for at least 2,000
+years, and how much longer no one can tell.
+They may have something to do with volcanoes,
+because water may have found its
+way to the heated interior of the earth, and
+being converted into steam, expands and
+causes an eruption.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we have some idea of the construction
+of the Earth, we must go on to the
+<em>life</em> of the wonderful plants and creatures
+which have peopled it.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_VEGETABLE_PART"><em>THE VEGETABLE PART.</em></h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3>THE DAWN OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> first beams of the rising sun, and the
+first grey light of the morning, tell us of the
+coming day; but we cannot even think of
+the dawn of that far-off day in the Earth’s
+history, when no voice of man or beast was
+heard, and no trees or grass covered it, without
+solemn wonder at the immense distance
+that day is from us. A thousand ages are
+in the sight of the Creator but as yesterday,
+and the period of man’s existence is only
+a moment compared to that of the lowly
+creatures which built up this World for him.
+In the first seas and on the land nothing was
+heard but the rushing of waters and the roaring
+of the fires of volcanoes.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to be quite certain
+whether the first living things were animals
+or plants; but I think it most likely that
+very simple plants grew first, and that very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>
+simple animals came after or with them.
+Among the first of these, or perhaps the very
+first, were some small animals called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Eozöon</i>,
+which means the “life-dawn animal,” and
+with them grew some simple plants. On the
+banks of the St. Lawrence river in Canada
+there is a great bed of rock called the
+Laurentian rocks, made almost entirely of
+the tiny remains of the “life-dawn animal,”
+which, when we look at them through a microscope,
+are found to possess nearly the same
+structure as some lowly organized shells
+living in the seas now. These rocks are
+found in many parts of the world besides—in
+Eastern America, Bavaria, Scotland, and
+Norway; and in some places their thickness
+has been estimated at thirty thousand feet, or
+nearly six miles, or one hundred times as
+thick as St. Paul’s Cathedral is high! These
+little creatures you see were at work over
+a great part of the Earth’s surface, and you
+may fancy how many thousands of thousands
+of years it took them to build up these rocks.
+The “life-dawn animal” is far older than the
+chalk-building foraminifera, and so far as we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>
+know it lived alone in its seas. There were
+none of the beautiful twisted <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">ammonite</i> shell-fish,
+nor the shark-like fishes of the chalk
+seas. The eozöon was the only kind of
+living creature, the “lord of creation” for the
+time; and though storms raged in the seas
+it inhabited, the water was so deep that it
+lived on undisturbed. When you are able
+to use a microscope you will be able to see
+the traces left by these tiny animals in what
+is now hard stone.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>Life began in a very small way: there
+were none of the great land animals we
+have now; but these seemingly insignificant
+builders were at work so long that they
+made the immense rocks I have told you of.
+But this is not all. About this time some
+very simple plants grew on the land, and
+were carried down by the rivers and formed
+deep beds. After a long time these became
+covered up with different earths and were
+turned into the substance called “black-lead,”
+which you use in drawing pencils. But this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
+is not really lead; it is almost pure carbon—in
+fact, the oldest kind of coal—so old that it
+will not now burn like coal, and is entirely
+made up of fossil plants crushed out of shape,
+so that we cannot now trace their forms, as
+we can the plants of the coal. When then
+you next take up a drawing pencil it will
+be easy to remember that the black substance
+which marks the paper was once a
+living plant, now changed by heat and pressure
+into almost pure carbon. As the name
+eozöon has been given to the “life-dawn
+animal,” I will give this black-lead the name
+of <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Eodendron</i>, or the “dawn-plant.”<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>Two very simple forms of life then
+occupied the earth and sea at the earliest
+time when anything at all was living, and
+strangely enough we use the dead bodies of
+both of them. We build houses of the rocks
+the eozöon laid down at the bottom of the
+sea, and the beautiful art of drawing is carried
+on with the carbon from the first plant
+life of the world—the eodendron.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+<p>I must take you away presently to the
+coal, and sandstone, and chalk, and show you
+how plants and animals gradually increased
+in number and size, and fishes began to
+inhabit the seas, and all living things were
+slowly going on to greater perfection; for as
+time went on there was a steady progress
+from creatures like the eozöon, which had
+scarcely any power of moving about, to the
+active, quarrelsome and greedy things like
+crabs and lobsters which came after them,
+and the gigantic ferns of the coal beds.
+The peaceful “life-dawn animals” drew their
+food from the vegetable substances dissolved
+in the waters, though they perhaps also lived
+on animals still smaller than themselves; but,
+by-and-by, creatures, which must have been
+monsters to them, swarmed in the seas and
+devoured their smaller companions wholesale;
+and in time the Earth became very much the
+same as it is now, a place where the struggle
+for life is always going on. It is certain that
+animals have fed upon one another from the
+very beginning; but this is no doubt a wise
+law of the Creator to prevent them from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>
+increasing too fast, as they would do if all that
+were born lived, and none were destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>We know much less about the vegetation—the
+plants and grasses—of the early ages
+of the world than of the animals; because
+plants rot away faster than bones and shells,
+and, besides, are less likely to be found in
+places where they would be preserved. A
+dead tree might be eaten up entirely by
+insects, as the white ants eat up fallen trees
+in a short time in tropical countries, and
+what is left of them crumbles away to fine
+powder and mixes with the soil. Immense
+trees are thus devoured now by millions of
+tiny insects no longer than your thumb nail,
+in India and Australia. No such thing as a
+whole and perfect fossil tree with every twig
+and leaf has been found; but then the coal
+beds are really great forests which have been
+buried for so long a time that they have
+quite altered in appearance. Still, among
+these coal beds we often find the bark, fruit,
+stems, and branches of trees very much like
+firs, and ferns, and huge club-mosses, which
+have the same shape they had when living,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
+though they are quite black, and burn exactly
+like coal.</p>
+
+<p>But there were plants long before the
+coal forests lived, and many fossil sea weeds
+are found in the old sandstones and limestones
+in Wales and other places.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The Old
+Red Sandstone, whose position you can see
+below the coal in the table of succession of
+formations, page <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, does not give us many
+fossil plants, though fishes and shells are
+common. This rock is found in Scotland,
+Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Ireland, as
+well as other places, and is often more than
+2,000 feet thick. It was not all formed in
+salt water we know, because many of the fossil
+fishes and shells it contains are fresh water
+kinds. It must all have been made of the
+pieces of still older rocks worn away by
+rivers and settled like a sediment in immense
+lakes, some of which were fresh water. Then,
+after the Old Red Sandstone, came a time
+when the limestones below the coal were
+laid down at the bottom of a vast sea, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+here the remains of land plants are of course
+few. Then it seems there must have been
+a very long time when there were large
+continents all over the world raised above
+the seas, but not very much, and on these
+the forests grew which afterwards became
+coal fields. Until this time the plants had
+been mostly water weeds, reeds, rushes, and
+sea weeds, and it was not until England and
+Ireland became one continent, as they were
+once and covered with woods, that the great
+period of vegetation began.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of plants was then most
+wonderful; but although coal is found in
+many different parts of the world, it was not
+all formed at one time, and though it is
+plentiful in England and Wales, Scotland,
+Ireland, France, Belgium, Russia, Hungary,
+Australia, New Zealand, China, and Borneo,
+it is older in some countries than in others.
+It is fortunate, however, that this useful
+material was made in Nature’s workshop in
+so many different countries, or it would have
+to be carried from one to another. The coal
+forests were not the same trees as we have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+now—oaks, elms, ashes, limes, and so on.
+Most of them had rather hollow trunks and
+splendid waving tops like ferns and reeds,
+though there were some like our fir-trees.</p>
+
+<p>If you lie down in the long grass before
+it is mown, and look through the stalks
+and fancy yourself an inch high only, you
+will have some idea how the coal forest
+would have looked if you had lived then.
+But there were no human beings on the
+Earth then, and I do not think there were
+any large animals, at least none have been
+found in the coal itself, except in Switzerland,
+where a few bones of the mammoth
+(an ancient elephant) and of the rhinoceros
+have been discovered in the much newer
+beds of coal, and also those of a large reptile
+like a crocodile in the coal beds of Ohio
+in America.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p065-1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p065-1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">II.</p>
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Fossil Tree Fern.</em></p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p065-2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p065-2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><em>Calamites.</em></p>
+
+<p class="right"><em>Lepidodendron.</em></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Different Kinds of Plants of the Coal Forests.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>In such immense forests insects must
+certainly have been plentiful, and some of
+the fossil bodies of beetles, dragon-flies, and
+spiders, have been preserved, and a few tree
+lizards.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Of course the edges of the coal
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>forests were washed here and there by the
+salt sea, and there must have been some fresh
+water rivers and ponds, for we find both fresh
+and salt water shells in these beds. It was
+almost dark in these forests, so thickly did the
+plants grow together. There were enormous
+club-mosses close together and as high as most
+houses, with their leaves interlaced making a
+complete network to shut out the sun. But
+the sun which shone on the forests was warm,
+and the air which went through them was soft,
+or they would not have grown so wonderfully.
+Indeed, there can be no doubt that the
+climate of northern regions was once much
+warmer than it is now. A thick bed of coal
+was discovered by the Arctic Expedition
+in 1875-6 actually within five hundred miles
+of the North Pole, where the ice on the sea
+is now thirty or forty feet thick!<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> The
+forest which formed this coal could only have
+grown in a temperate climate, and there are
+no forests there now; it is so intensely cold
+they could not live. There must then have
+been a great change in the climate of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+Arctic regions since that coal was living vegetation.
+The few plants and mosses which
+can live there now are of a very different
+and more hardy kind than those of the coal
+forests.</p>
+
+<p>If you look at the engraving facing page <a href="#i_p065-1">64</a>,
+you will see a drawing of one of the tree
+ferns with its delicate fronds which grew
+so abundantly in the coal forests, and there
+are many other plants, some like the common
+“mare’s tails,” or <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">calamites</i>, growing in shallow
+ponds and ditches now—only the “mare’s
+tails” or calamites of the coal forests were as
+high as poplars.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> You can imagine what a
+splendid sight these forests of ferns, club-mosses,
+and “mare’s tails,” must have been,
+and what a multitude of beautiful insects and
+butterflies must have flitted about in them;
+but their frail bodies have almost all perished,
+so that we know very little of the animated
+creatures of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Besides several sorts of coal both soft and
+hard there is a substance called “lignite,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>
+which is scarcely wood and scarcely coal, of a
+brown colour. In fact, lignite is wood almost
+turned to coal, and it has helped us to learn
+that coal was once living wood; but it is not
+nearly so old as the coal. Then again there
+is the beautiful substance called “jet” used for
+making bracelets. This is a kind of fossil
+gum or pitch dropped from the trees while
+they were growing, and, though different in
+colour, it is much the same in kind as amber.
+Amber is often found with flies, spiders, and
+small leaves imbedded in it. When this fossil
+resin or gum was flowing out of the ancient
+pine-trees, and was quite sticky, flies settled
+upon it and became entangled in it, and as
+more of the gum flowed out they became
+quite covered. Then the gum dropped from
+the tree and hardened, and it is now found in
+lumps on the shores of the Baltic Sea, and in
+beds of sand and clay with fossil wood. It is
+of a beautiful bright yellow colour, and beads
+for necklaces and other ornaments are made
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>If we arrange the things we have been
+talking about in order, the oldest first, they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+would come thus: plumbago or black-lead—or,
+as I have called it, eodendron, “the life-dawn
+plant”—first, then hard coal, then soft
+coal, then lignite and jet, then bog oak and
+peat. But I must tell you something about
+bog oak and peat. In many of the swamps
+and bogs of the World the trunks of dead
+trees are found, which have become quite
+black and almost like lignite, because they
+have been buried so long. Thus, in the bogs
+of Ireland oak trees are often found, and they
+were most likely living when the reindeer inhabited
+Ireland. This old bogwood is made
+into beads for necklaces and other ornaments.
+Peat is a partly decayed vegetable substance,
+with beautiful little plants growing on its surface,
+and is really coal in its infancy. It is found
+all over the world more or less in wet places,
+and consists of the roots and stems of mosses
+and reeds, some of which are like the gigantic
+plants of the coal period, but very small in
+comparison. I have no doubt that in time
+some of these peat bogs may be turned into
+coal if they sink down and become covered
+with other earths, but at present they are all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
+on the surface and so soft that they are dangerous
+to walk upon because one may sink
+in and be smothered.</p>
+
+<p>This, as far as we can trace it, is a sketch
+of the history of vegetable life on our Earth.
+We will go back to the coal for a moment and
+see what the animal life of that time was.
+The seas of the time of the coal forests were
+sometimes shallow, sometimes deep, and in
+the limestone rocks of the oceans which
+separated the great continents of that time
+there is a record of the inhabitants of the
+seas. The land plants were of more than
+1,000 different kinds, and there were more
+than 200 kinds of fishes in the waters, and
+corals, shells, and small crab-like animals innumerable.
+The fishes were fellows with
+terrible teeth, and their bodies were covered
+with strong hard scales. One of these fish
+was thirty feet long, and there were others
+of considerable size. It is curious that the
+fishes of this time remind one of reptiles
+(lizards and crocodiles), just as the birds of
+a future time seem to have something of the
+reptile about them, as you will see by-and-by.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p>
+
+<p>I dare say you have remarked while
+reading that all the plants and animals of the
+early ages of the world seem to be made on
+a simple plan, and as the Earth grows older
+they become more perfect, and this is just
+what I want you to take notice of all through.
+The plants of the coal period, you have seen,
+were nothing like so perfect in construction,
+beautiful as they were, as the forest trees of
+the present time, neither were the animals
+so perfect as those living now. There has
+been <em>progress</em>, step by step, throughout the
+vegetable and animal creation; and, though
+many of the lower forms of the early ages
+exist now, there are others far superior to
+them which did not exist then: but all this
+will come in “The Animal Part.”</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of the Earth’s age came
+the wonderful period of vegetation which
+gave us our coal, and after that there was a
+great and busy time, when huge reptiles and
+reptile-like birds, and then true birds, made
+their appearance. But that belongs to the
+next part of the “puzzle of life.”</p>
+
+<p>If we look with astonishment at the coal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
+forests, we may also well think of them with
+thankfulness. Here is the sunshine of past
+ages stored up for our use, and we bring it
+out again to warm ourselves, cook our food,
+make all our iron things, and drive our steam-engines!
+Can any romance be finer than
+this, that we are carried across to America
+and India and Australia in steam-boats driven
+by the “fossil sunlight” of ages and ages past,
+and whirled along at sixty miles an hour over
+iron rails by the same stored-up strength?</p>
+
+<p>If you doubt this, think of living trees. Do
+they not live by the air and sunlight? Will
+they grow without these? They spread
+their branches and leaves to gather the
+warmth and light from the air, and when
+they are cut down and dried, and you put a
+match to the wood, all the old warmth and
+light come out again; and we know that
+the coal is only fossil wood. Our Creator
+wastes nothing. Even when there were no
+people living to rejoice in the sun, He
+thought of those people who <em>should</em> come in
+time, and not one of the fiery rays of the
+fierce sun was lost. These mighty forests<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+were sent to gather it, and when they had
+died down they sank below the surface and
+were covered from the air, that none of their
+light or heat should escape.</p>
+
+<p>In such forests it is strange that there
+were no birds, especially as there were swarms
+of insects, and no doubt abundance of worms.
+But no bone of bird or any trace of feathered
+songster of these lovely groves has yet been
+found. Little lizards chased flies and beetles
+up and down the stems of the club-mosses and
+ferns, and larger reptiles lurked in the long
+damp grass under the shade. The pools and
+ponds were filled with curious fishes, and
+reefs of beautiful white coral fringed all the
+shores of the seas.</p>
+
+<p>But the Earth was not fit for the habitation
+of man. The fruits of the trees were not such
+as he could have eaten, and their wood was
+not hard enough to build houses of. Still it
+was being got ready for him, and not a leaf
+waved uselessly in the bright, warm air, and
+not a tree fell to the ground, but it was to be
+turned into coal, and to come forth again one
+day a hard black lump, without any of its
+former beauty, but to give back the light and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+heat it had gathered from the sun ages and
+ages ago.</p>
+
+<p>Many periods in the Earth’s history have
+passed since the coal period, and in every
+one of these the trees have been increasing
+in perfection, though there have never since
+been such great numbers of a few kinds
+growing. When we come to the more lately
+formed beds of earth we begin to find the
+cypress, willow, ash, oak, elm, and other
+forest trees which are living now. The
+trunks of these trees, blackened by age, lie
+buried in peat bogs and swamps all over
+Europe. The mighty Mississippi river brings
+down immense quantities of dead trees, and
+as these sink to the bottom near its mouth
+they are forming future coal beds. Along
+the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, too, and
+stretching far away under the German
+Ocean, is an old English forest. In some
+places the trunks of the buried trees may
+be seen standing upright just where they
+grew. The nets of the fishermen are continually
+bringing up pieces of wood, roots,
+and seeds; and when the sea washes away
+the soft cliffs here the bones, teeth, and tusks<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+of the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus,
+and other large animals which inhabited this
+forest, may be seen in great numbers.</p>
+
+<p>Down below the waves of ocean have
+these woods sunk with all their once living
+creatures, and though you may suppose that
+it must have been very long ago that they
+grew, they are of the same kind as those
+which now make the hills and valleys of
+England beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes a forest must sink very fast,
+for travellers have told us how they have
+sailed on rivers and lakes over the tops of
+sunken trees, and, looking down into the
+clear water, have seen the branches waving
+below—tall trees standing upright at the
+bottom, and the boats sailing over their tops!</p>
+
+<p>We must now pass on to the living creatures
+which peopled the Earth, and their
+story can be told with more certainty than
+that of the perishable plants which clothed
+the surface of the ground, and, while they
+rendered it beautiful, also served as food and
+shelter for innumerable animals, and have
+become so useful to us as coal, lignite, black-lead,
+and other productions of ancient forests.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> Specimen in Table-case 15, Room V., North Gallery
+British Museum.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> The name <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Eophyton</i> has also been suggested for the
+earliest vegetable forms.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Divisions A and B of Case 1, Room I., North Gallery,
+contain some of the oldest known fossil plants.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> Fossil insects in Table-case No. 14, Room V.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> In 81° 44′ N. latitude.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Specimens of plants from the coal in Cases No. 2, 3, 4,
+in Room I.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_ANIMAL_PART"><em>THE ANIMAL PART.</em></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">We</span> must now go back and collect the
+smaller pieces of “the puzzle” which make
+up the animal part. The great periods of
+vegetation ended in our country with the coal
+forests, and there has been no such wonderful
+growth of plants since the time when the
+New Red Sandstone, lying above the coal,
+was formed; though no doubt trees and plants
+have since flourished, as they do now on the
+Earth, but not in such quantities as during
+the coal period.</p>
+
+<p>We remember that the eozöon, “the life-dawn
+animal,” is the oldest animal we know
+of, and that it lived so long ago as when the
+Laurentian rocks were laid down at the
+bottom of the seas of that time; then in
+later rocks we find the burrows of sea worms
+in the stone, and later still simple shells
+with two valves like the common mussel, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+other animals of a simple kind, like the corals,
+sponges, and star-fishes which exist now.
+There must have been millions of these
+creatures in the older limestone seas, for the
+rocks are almost entirely composed of their
+fossil shells and bodies. By-and-by a rather
+superior animal inhabited the seas of Wales,
+called a trilobite, of which you will see a
+picture on the opposite page. This curious
+animal was of the same family as the shrimps
+and prawns, but much larger, and he must
+have been a giant among the others. None
+of these animals had any bones, you must
+understand; but they had a hard shelly
+covering to support their soft bodies inside,
+and no doubt the trilobites were able to swim
+about very fast.<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p079" style="max-width: 33.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p079.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">III.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Trilobite.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>What I want you to take notice of now is
+the <em>progress</em> that has been going on from the
+almost motionless eozöon to the shell-fish
+and star-fish, which could crawl along the
+bottom of the sea and over the rocks, to this
+active, quick-moving trilobite, with his great
+paddles. Then the next step is a very great
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>one, when we come to animals with bones.
+The first of these are fishes. All the other
+bones are joined to the backbone, therefore
+all animals with bones are called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">vertebrata</i>,
+which is a Latin word meaning having a
+backbone with joints. Now animals with
+bones are plainly superior to those with only
+shells, and when we find fishes among the
+rocks of Wales and Devonshire we know
+that we are beginning to pick up some
+important pieces of the “puzzle of life.”
+These fishes were most of them related to
+the sturgeon, and their bones and teeth are
+found in great quantities in the Old Red
+Sandstone rocks, just below the coal.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is not until we get above the coal into
+the oolite or egg-stone rocks that still larger
+and altogether superior animals, both of sea
+and land, began to increase, and this is called</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE AGE OF REPTILES.</h3>
+
+<p>This has been called the reptile age because
+there were such numbers of animals<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+like crocodiles, lizards, and tortoises (which
+are all reptiles), and some of them were of
+immense size. For instance, there was a huge
+creature something like a frog, but as large
+as a Shetland pony, called the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Labyrinthodon</i>,
+with a great many curious teeth, and this
+animal has left footprints in the New Red
+Sandstone which have been dried and buried,
+we can’t tell how long, and there are the
+cracks made by the sun drying the place he
+walked over when that was soft earth.
+There is a drawing of some of these footsteps
+in the picture on the next page, and there
+are also the footprints of a large bird, and
+you can see where he walked over the soft
+earth and made a long line of footmarks; and
+if you look at the footprints of birds on the
+snow or mud now you will notice marks just
+like these. Then there is another picture of
+a single footprint of a large bird, and all those
+round dots are where rain-drops fell and left
+their marks in the soft earth.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p083" style="max-width: 43.5625em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p083.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">IV.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>(1) Footprints of Labyrinthodon.</em></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>(3) Footprints of Birds, (2) with marks of Rain-drops</em>.</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>I dare say you will wonder how it is that
+these footprints have not disappeared. Well,
+when the animals and birds that made them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>had gone the marks became filled with dry
+sand, no doubt blown in by the wind, and
+then the mud dried hard, and at last it became
+covered with other earths and sank slowly
+down, just as the coal forests had done before,
+and remained there until we dug it up with
+these tracks of the birds and animals that
+lived then. Some of these birds must have
+been larger than any living now, because their
+footmarks are so long. None of their bones
+have been found yet, I believe, but plenty of
+the teeth and some bones of the labyrinthodon
+have. The real footmarks, of course,
+are very large, though they are small in the
+picture.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the great beds of Lias there are many
+other strange animals, and among them are
+two great fish-lizards called the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ichthyosaurus</i>
+and <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Plesiosaurus</i>. Both of these lived in the
+water and perhaps came on land sometimes,
+and it is certain that they must have been very
+ferocious creatures, from their great size and
+sharp teeth. The plesiosaurus would be able<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+to raise his long neck above the water and
+snap at some of those curious birds rather
+like bats which lived at the time, and of
+which I shall have something to say presently.
+Some of these fish-lizards were as large as
+whales, and their bodies have been so beautifully
+preserved in the limestone rocks that we
+can actually sometimes find in their stomachs
+the food they lived on.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p087-1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p087-1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p  class="center no-indent">V.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ichthyosaurus.</i></p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p087-2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p087-2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Plesiosaurus.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">FISH-REPTILES.</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Now we have got to a higher order of
+creation still, these fish-lizards, and they remind
+one of the next step in progress—birds.
+You know that all birds lay eggs, so do
+almost all reptiles, such as crocodiles, lizards,
+and most snakes, so that they are alike in
+this. Then the plesiosaurus with his long
+neck reminds us of such birds as the heron
+and the swan, but he is altogether more like
+a reptile than either a fish or a bird. There
+were also huge land reptiles, which lived in
+the forests of the time, and must have been a
+terror to the smaller animals. From the bones
+of one of these which have been found in the
+oolite clays near Weymouth in Dorsetshire
+(the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Cetiosaurus</i>), we see that it must have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>been nearly as large as an elephant, and
+there are others called the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Megalosaurus</i>,
+<em>Dinosaurus</em>, &amp;c. All these names end with
+<em>saurus</em>, a name taken from the Greek word
+meaning lizard; and you will see now why the
+oolite, or “Jurassic”<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> age, as it is sometimes
+called, is well named the “reptile age,” for
+these creatures swarmed on the land and in
+the sea. Specimens of these you can see for
+yourselves in the cases on the walls of the
+third room in the North Gallery of the British
+Museum, where all the fossils are collected.</p>
+
+<p>But still more extraordinary animals
+than any of these lived at the time, and we
+can scarcely tell whether they were birds or
+reptiles, as they were something like both,
+but I suppose we must call them flying reptiles,
+and they are the nearest approach to
+birds that had yet existed. These creatures
+are called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Pterodactyles</i>, from two Greek words
+which mean “wing-fingered.” Suppose the
+little fingers of both your hands were a yard
+longer than the others, and suppose a thick<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
+leathery skin was stretched from the tips of
+your long little fingers to each of your feet,
+you would have wings something like a
+pterodactyl and also something like the
+wings of a bat. But the pterodactyl had a
+long neck and a long beak-like mouth, full
+of long sharp pointed teeth. It could not
+walk much I think, but it could hang itself
+up by its hind limbs to a tree or rock, head
+downwards like a bat, and must have been
+able to fly very strongly, with its huge
+leathery wings, but it had no feathers.
+There were swarms of these curious half
+lizard half bird-like animals on the land, and
+they were of all sizes, some no bigger than
+a crow, and some as large as the albatross,
+measuring twelve feet across their outstretched
+wings. Their skeletons are some
+of the commonest fossils in the oolite rocks,
+all through the great reptile age.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now you see we have come to a reptile
+that can fly, but, excepting for its wings and
+some of its bones, more like a crocodile than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+a bird. A little further on we find another
+curious animal in the oolite rocks, which is
+much more like a true bird than the pterodactyl,
+because it had feathered wings. It is
+called the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Archæopteryx</i>, which means “ancient
+wing,” and I have given a picture of it
+on the same page as the pterodactyl, so that
+you may compare them together. The blade-bone
+and “merry-thought” of this creature
+were exactly like those of a bird, and so
+were the feet and legs, which would enable
+it to walk easily, or perch on the branch of
+a tree, but the tail was long and many-jointed
+like that of a lizard, with a fan of
+feathers growing on each side of it, and
+short feathered wings. Then it most likely
+had teeth like a lizard, and there were short
+claws at the bend of the wings. This bird-reptile
+was about the size of a crow, and was
+the first we know of with feathers, and the
+limestone rock has preserved it most beautifully
+through all the long ages which have
+passed since it flitted over the land of the
+oolite period.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Later still than these, there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
+lived in America, about the time the chalk was
+formed in England, two strange birds called
+<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Hesperornis</i> and <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ichthyornis</i>, both of which
+had teeth in the jaws. The former was an
+immense fellow like the penguin, with short
+wings, and the latter was about the size of a
+pigeon with large feathered wings.</p>
+
+<p>They are finding more of these curious
+creatures every now and then in America.
+Some are without teeth, and have a horny
+bill like that of a real bird, and in other ways
+more nearly resemble living birds; still they
+have not lost the appearance of reptiles in
+their principal bones.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p093-1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p093-1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">VI.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Pterodactyl</i> (<em>Wing-finger</em>).</p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p093-2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p093-2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Archæopteryx</i> (<em>Ancient-wing</em>).</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>I have been particular in describing some
+of these fish-lizards and bird-reptiles; because
+they, or their near relations, were the principal
+inhabitants of land and sea from the end
+of the coal period to the end of the chalk,
+though there were of course swarms of fishes
+and shell-fish; but I ought to tell you that
+even so early as this there was at least one
+animal known which suckled its young ones,
+and this was a small insect-eating creature
+not larger than a rat, of the same family
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>(called <em>Marsupial</em>) as the kangaroo of
+Australia, which carries its young ones in
+a pocket or pouch in its skin.</p>
+
+<p>All this time we have been hunting for
+parts of “the puzzle” in those ancient oolite
+rocks between the coal and the chalk, and
+those we have found are very important.
+We have seen the slow progress from simple
+sea shells to simple fishes, and then onwards
+to fish-lizards and bird-reptiles with one
+little marsupial animal, of a far higher kind,
+in between, as if to tell us beforehand what
+more complete and perfect animals we might
+expect by-and-by. After the fishes we have
+found fish-lizards, then bird-reptiles with
+wings, but no feathers, and later still a bird-reptile
+with wing and tail feathers. How
+different the life of the Earth was at the end
+of the “reptile age” of the oolite rocks, to
+the far back Laurentian time when one
+little creature, our old friend eozöon, alone
+held possession of the seas!</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD.</h3>
+
+<p>Now let us look into the rocks next
+above, and see what is to be found there.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span>
+We have arrived in the Cretaceous period,
+or time when the chalk was formed.<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> You
+remember I told you you might call this
+“foraminifera earth” because so much of
+it was made up of the shells of these tiny
+animals, thousands of which could be put into
+a thimble. Whenever you make a mark with
+a piece of drawing chalk you rub off a number
+of them, and you will see what pretty little
+creatures they were if you look at the drawings
+of some of them on the next page as they are
+seen under the microscope, magnified thousands
+of times their natural size; but there
+are others of different shapes. On the same
+page too there is a handsome shell, called an
+ammonite, and of its real size, common in
+chalk rocks. The seas of the time must have
+been very deep as I have explained before,
+and the chalk contains numbers of bones of
+fishes everywhere, and many of the remains
+of the reptile-like creatures of the time before.
+Corals, sea-urchins, crabs, &amp;c., abounded, and
+as you can scarcely ever see chalk without
+immense flint stones in it, you may suppose
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>what millions of sponges lived on the rocks,
+for these flints are partly made up of their
+fossil bodies.<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Another Cretaceous period is
+beginning now at the bottom of the Atlantic
+and Pacific Oceans, where it is deep enough
+to cover the Alps, for these little foraminifera
+are living on the surface in countless millions,
+and day by day their fossil shells are settling
+down to the bottom and forming a soft grey
+mud, full of the carbonate of lime like chalk.
+The climate of the Cretaceous age was mild
+and pleasant, as we know from the kind of
+animals in the seas. Slowly the water began
+to get shallower and shallower by the upheaval
+of the bed, and at last the bottom of
+this mighty chalk ocean came up to the light
+and sun, to be covered in some places with the
+drift and worn particles of older rocks swept
+over it by rivers, and to receive new plants and
+new animals, and in some places to remain
+almost bare, as it is on the downs of Brighton.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p097" style="max-width: 57.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p097.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">VII.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">FOSSILS OF THE CHALK.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent">
+1 <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Ammonite.</i><br>
+2 3 4 <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Foraminifera</i> (<em>Chalk-builders</em>).<br>
+</p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Now we take one more step upwards into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+almost a new world—the world on which
+mighty animals lived, and which man came
+to share with them.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE TERTIARY PERIOD.</h3>
+
+<p>The reign of the reptiles is now passed.
+The ichthyosaurus and pterodactyl no longer
+inhabited the seas and continents. Great
+changes had taken place in the shape of the
+land. A river larger than the Rhine swept
+majestically through England from the borders
+of Wales right out into the German
+Ocean, and its banks were covered with forests
+and marshes, where the new animals which
+had come to take possession of the earth
+lived and moved and had their being. The
+mountains of the Pyrenees were raised above
+the sea, and parts of Surrey and Sussex
+appeared too. It was most likely in the
+early part of the Tertiary period that the
+stone was formed of which almost all Paris
+is built. Fancy a great city built of the shells
+of dead animals! One can scarcely believe it:
+but the microscope lets us into this secret of
+Nature. If we take a piece of this stone and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+examine it in a powerful microscope we see
+that it is made almost entirely of tiny shells,
+so small that myriads of them could be
+packed in a nut-shell. How long must they
+have been working to make all the stone beds
+of which Paris is built? We cannot measure
+the time, we can only know it must have
+been enormous!</p>
+
+<p>All kinds of animals both of sea and land
+increased in numbers and perfection. The
+ammonites were dead, but their even more
+beautiful relation, the nautilus, was living as
+it is now. The trilobite was gone, but his
+next relation, the lobster and crab, appeared.
+Fishes abounded. Whales which suckle their
+young ones appeared, and the numbers of vertebrata,
+or animals with backbones, were more
+numerous than they had ever been before.
+Just as animals with bones are more perfect
+than those with only skins or shells, so animals
+which suckle their young ones are more perfect
+than those which only lay eggs. Thus the
+whale is a more perfect animal than the shark,
+though both inhabit the water; and elephants
+and even rats and mice more perfect still; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+because there were so many of these “sucklers,”
+or mammalia as they are called, in the Tertiary
+period, we know that all living creatures were
+becoming more perfect. It will interest you
+too to learn that monkeys began to appear
+now, and that they were common in France,
+while at the present time the only part of
+Europe where they are to be found is on the
+rock of Gibraltar.</p>
+
+<p>But I want particularly to tell you of the
+giant animals—the Mammoth, Mastodon,
+Megatherium, Dinotherium, and others, and
+first let us see what the mammoth was like.</p>
+
+<p>In former times, when people accidentally
+found the bones of these animals, they actually
+thought they had belonged to giant <em>men</em>, and
+we can scarcely wonder at that: but we know
+better. If only one small bone is shown to
+Professor Owen or Professor Huxley, he can
+tell at once whether it belonged to a man or
+an animal, a fish or a bird, and very often
+the particular animal too. Well, the bones of
+the mammoth were found in the north of
+Russia on the banks of the river Lena in
+1800: but the Russians knew of them before<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>
+that, and the name they gave the animal
+means “earth,” because they supposed it
+burrowed in the earth like a mole. This one
+is now in the Museum at St. Petersburg, and
+its brownish coat and long black hairs, and
+even the hoofs and some of the flesh, can be
+distinctly seen. The drawing in the frontispiece
+is taken from it. It was strange that
+any people could have supposed that this
+huge creature, larger than an elephant and
+with great curved tusks ten feet long and
+weighing 160 lbs., could have got underground
+of its own accord: but that was the
+only way in which they could account for
+finding it buried in the earth on the banks of
+the rivers. Look at the picture in the frontispiece;
+what a splendid animal he was, this old
+elephant; larger and stronger than any living
+elephants! Immense quantities of their bones
+are found in Siberia, and the tusks and teeth
+are brought in ship-loads to England, where
+they are sold for their ivory. Their skeletons
+have been found in most countries of Europe,
+in many parts of Asia, and in North America,
+and these animals must have been common<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+at one time near London, for their bones have
+been dug up in the brick earth at Ilford in
+Essex and other places near the Thames.
+There is a skull with tusks set up with iron
+supports in the British Museum.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>There was besides another animal very
+much like this called the Mastodon; but it had
+tusks in the lower jaws as well as the upper,
+four in all, and the lower tusks dropped out
+when the animal grew old. The whole
+skeleton of one of these is also put up in the
+Museum, which you ought to go and see.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>
+Mastodons’ bones have been discovered in
+England and other parts of Europe, and in
+North and South America and India, so that
+they were spread pretty well all over the world.
+They had very curious pointed teeth rather
+like a lot of fir cones piled together, not flat
+grinders like those of the mammoth and all
+living elephants, and perhaps they fed upon
+fruits and nuts, and boughs, as I do not think
+they could have managed well to chew grass
+and leaves with such pointed teeth. The
+teeth in their old dead jaws are still beautifully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+white and look like china. Both the
+mammoth and the mastodon had long trunks
+of course, and they must have been grand looking
+creatures marching about in the English
+forests. We should be very much startled if
+we were to meet one of them now in an English
+wood: but there is no chance of that,
+they have all passed away, and the only
+relations they have living are the elephants of
+Africa and Asia.</p>
+
+<p>During this Tertiary period, or at least
+the early part of it, besides the mammoth and
+mastodon, the hippopotamus and rhinoceros
+were plentiful about the Thames. Those
+same Ilford marshes in Essex have been a
+complete storehouse of the remains of these
+animals. The bones of a hundred different
+mammoths and eighty rhinoceroses have been
+dug up lately from the damp, black soil, as
+well as many belonging to the hippopotamus,
+and we can have no doubt that all the
+swamps along the north side of the river
+were inhabited by large herds of these huge
+beasts, or so many of their skeletons could
+not have been collected in one place. It is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+very likely they were overtaken in a flood of
+the river and drowned, and their bodies sank
+down in the mud of the river bank: but anyhow,
+there they are to tell us that they
+lived and died almost within sight of the
+Tower of London, if it had been built then,
+as of course it was not.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p108" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p108.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">VIII.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Gigantic Irish Stag</em> (<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Cervus Megaceros</i>).</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Long long ago too, before there was a
+single brick where London stands, and when
+the few human beings who were living were
+obliged to hide themselves in caves, great
+lions might have been heard roaring at night
+in the forests of the Thames Valley. The
+bones of this lion have been found in many
+different parts of England, and a terrible
+fellow he must have been, for some of his
+canine teeth (the long sharp teeth in cats and
+dogs) were more than six inches long. Indeed
+they were like small swords, and this is why
+he has been called the “sabre-toothed” lion.
+There were also bears, like the great grisly
+bear of America, and leopards, hyenas, and
+wolves, and besides two kinds of ox far larger
+than those we have now. But one of the
+handsomest animals was the great Irish stag.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>When standing upright the top of his horns
+would be as high as two tall men. He was
+indeed a fine fellow with his immense spreading
+antlers. The deer in our parks would
+look dwarfs beside him. He inhabited both
+England and Ireland: but, being found more
+often in Ireland, he has got the name of the
+<em>Irish</em> stag. As many as thirty of the
+skeletons of these stags have been found together
+under a bog in Ireland, and in some of
+the bones the marrow is still preserved, and
+they burn well. Fences have been made of
+these bones in Ireland, and when the people
+of a small village in the county of Antrim
+heard of the battle of Waterloo they made a
+great bonfire of the bones and horns of the
+Irish stag to rejoice over the victory. I dare
+say these stags were hunted by wolves, and
+perhaps driven on to the ice of ancient lakes,
+where they broke through and got drowned,
+for so many of their skeletons are found together.
+I could not pass this magnificent stag
+by without giving you a picture of him.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> He<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>
+was a much nobler looking animal than the
+reindeer, which lived along with him at the time
+in England, and from his appearance I should
+say he was a swift runner and great fighter.
+Some antlers have been found locked together,
+just as these stags died in mortal combat, and
+I never see Sir Edwin Landseer’s beautiful
+picture of two red-deer stags fighting without
+thinking what a grand sight it would have been
+to see two of these great Irish stags rushing
+at each other with their powerful horns.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of those animals is living now,
+and none of them is mentioned in any history
+or tradition whatever, and though there is no
+doubt that men living in Europe saw the
+mammoth alive (as you will find in the next
+chapter), they knew of no kind of writing in
+which to tell us of them; these fossils are
+the only records left, but they speak plainly
+enough of the time when England and the
+whole of Europe were inhabited by these
+races of huge animals.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p112" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p112.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">IX.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>The Megatherium.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Now I must carry you away to South
+America, where there are more wonders. If
+I were to tell you of all the singular monsters
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>people have found in the beds of the rivers
+there it would make a book of itself. You
+know what large rivers there are in that
+country, and how they run for thousands of
+miles through almost flat plains called
+“Pampas.” Well, these rivers have often
+changed their beds by cutting new channels
+in the soft soil. The old dry beds of the
+rivers are the burying-places of some most
+curious animals, but I have not room to tell
+you about more than one of them at present.
+He is called the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Megatherium</i>, which means
+“great beast.” His size and strength were
+enormous. The largest hippopotamus looks
+small by his side. His leg bones are bigger
+than your body. He was more like the
+sloth than any other living animal, but he
+could not climb. He stood on those huge,
+broad hind feet, with his strong tail as a sort
+of third leg, and tore down the branches of
+the trees to feed on, or even rooted them up
+to get at the leaves. Standing by his skeleton
+in the British Museum<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> one feels quite a
+shrimp, and he looks strong enough to walk<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>
+away comfortably with an elephant on his
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Another immense animal inhabited South
+America at the time, which geologists have
+called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Dinotherium</i>, or “dreadful beast.”<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> He
+was a relation of the mastodon, but his tusks
+were very curious. Instead of being in the
+upper jaw and turned upwards they stuck out
+from the lower jaw and curved downwards,
+giving him a very odd appearance. He most
+probably had a trunk like the mammoth or
+mastodon, but perhaps not so long. All these
+of course were vegetable feeders.</p>
+
+<p>The Tertiary period is so remarkable for
+the numbers of animals more or less related
+to elephants and spread all over the world,
+that we might almost call it the “elephant
+age,” as the oolite has been named the “reptile
+age.” These elephantine animals abounded
+in Europe, Asia, and North and South
+America, and though none of this kind have
+yet been found in Australia and Africa, I
+cannot help thinking they will be discovered
+in Africa at all events, for there is no doubt
+that Africa and Europe were once joined.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p>
+
+<p>Australia you know possesses that animal
+so unlike all others that when we first see it
+we are quite astonished—the kangaroo. The
+bones of a huge fossil kangaroo have been
+found in Australia which must have stood
+fourteen or fifteen feet high I should think
+when on its hind legs, or more than twice as
+large as any living now.<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Then there were
+giant birds in New Zealand (something like
+the ostrich) called <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">dinornis</i> or “dreadful bird.”
+These fellows had no wings, and they must
+have been very much taller than the ostrich
+or emu. To look at their leg bones you
+would think they were the bones of oxen
+instead of birds, they are so immensely thick
+and strong. I do not think any of these are
+living now, because they have been sought
+for carefully, and none of the natives even
+can say that they have seen one. But their
+skeletons are common in the surface earth,
+and their bones, cracked to get the marrow
+out of them, are often dug out of the heaps
+of refuse collected about ancient cooking
+places. So that they were used for food, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+perhaps they have not been extinct—that is
+to say, died out—more than a few hundred
+years; and this is more likely because feathers
+are sometimes attached to the remains, and
+undecayed sinews on the feet. A human skeleton
+has been found in a grave in New Zealand,
+too, with the egg of one between its arms, and
+little piles of pebbles are often seen among
+their bones, where the stomach would be, which
+the bird swallowed to digest its food, just as
+many birds do now. The natives called it the
+Moa, and they have some traditions about it,
+and, all things considered, it is probably one
+of the most recent fossil animals, and that is
+the reason why I have left it to the last.<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now I dare say you will wish to know
+when the animals living now took the place
+of those I have described, and which have all
+passed away. This cannot be told with certainty,
+but you will see in the “Human Part”
+that Men were living when the mammoth,
+mastodon, and some other extinct animals, inhabited
+the Earth, and that the reindeer, ox,
+bear, wolf, hyena, &amp;c., have survived to the
+present day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>
+
+<p>Throughout these immense periods of
+time there are gaps which we cannot yet
+fill up. No one can yet say, for instance,
+when the last of the mammoths disappeared,
+and the first of their near relations, the Indian
+and African elephants, took their place.
+These are the missing parts of “the puzzle
+of life” which you may perhaps one of these
+days find when you come to study the subject,
+and when you have learned all that is known
+at present. But you may be sure of this, that
+throughout all time there has been <em>progress</em>,
+the lower forms of animal life have been followed
+by more perfect forms as the Earth
+grew older. It is true the lower forms of
+life have not all died out. These imperfect
+animals have run through all the ages—the
+chalk builder of the Cretaceous age lives in
+the ocean now—and there are many other
+simple animals which lived in Old Red Sandstone
+times, and are not extinct yet, but
+wherever a superior kind of animal has passed
+away another more perfect has taken its place.
+This will be seen at once if we compare the
+“Reptile Age” with the Tertiary. The great
+ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and pterodactyl<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+are gone, but now we have the more perfect
+crocodiles and birds. The mammoth is gone,
+but we have the elephant. There are no
+giant mosses or towering tree ferns, but our
+forest trees are more perfect and more varied.
+The plants which formed the coal forests and
+once clothed the Earth with beauty have
+dwindled away to the lowly forms which we
+must stoop to examine in swamps, and these
+humble plants are all the surviving relatives
+of their once noble family. The lordly oaks
+and elms, stronger, and even more lovely in
+the sweet drapery of their foliage, and much
+better fitted for our use, have succeeded all
+those soft-stemmed plants which grew so fast
+and were the best possible kind for forming
+coal.</p>
+
+<p>When you are able to study what is called
+comparative anatomy you will see how wonderful
+the <em>plan</em> of creation is, and how beautifully
+it has been worked out by its great Designer.
+You will see in the bones of the reptiles of the
+oolite rocks a prophecy as it were of the birds
+and animals which were to come. What
+could be more prophetic of animals with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+power of perfect flight than the leather-winged
+pterodactyl, half lizard and half bird? In
+some of these animals you will see bones only
+half formed, and useless to that creature, which
+were brought to perfection in later times, and
+became the most important part of the body.</p>
+
+<p>It is very difficult for me to make all this
+plain to you, but if you are really interested
+in it you will go to a museum where the fossils
+are collected, and then I am very much mistaken
+if you do not find a new and strange
+world opened to you.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> Numerous specimens in Case No. 7, Room V.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> Specimens of fossil fishes from various rocks in Wall-case
+No. 1, Room II.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> See examples in the large Wall-cases in Rooms I., II.,
+and III., North Gallery.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> So called because the mountain chain of the Jura Alps
+was raised during this period.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> Several specimens in Room III., and in Table-case
+No. 16, Room IV.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several specimens,
+imperfect.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> From the Latin word “creta,” meaning chalk.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> Ammonites in the Table-cases in Rooms V. and VI.
+For enlarged models of foraminifera, see Case No. 15 in
+Room V.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> Room VI., North Gallery.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> In the same room.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> Complete specimens of male and female in the middle
+of Room V.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> Room VI.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> Head and tusks in Wall-case No. 2, Room VI.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> Skull in Wall-case No. 1, Room VI.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Several specimens in Wall-case No. 11, Room III.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_HUMAN_PART"><em>THE HUMAN PART.</em></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">The</span> history of the human race is of course
+even more interesting than that of the plants
+and animals which lived so long before man
+and prepared the way for him, because man
+is the “crown of creation.”</p>
+
+<p>When first placed on this Earth he must
+have been but little superior to the animals in
+his outward life, though he had very different
+powers within him. He could gather the
+fruits of the Earth like them, and perhaps
+used some of the smaller creatures as food,
+but he could do little more. He scarcely
+knew that he possessed the faculties which
+would in time make him lord of the Earth
+and the creatures inhabiting it. By slow
+and painful experience he was to gather
+those stores of knowledge that were to enable
+him to overcome difficulties, to provide him
+with shelter from the weather and protection
+from dangerous animals, give increasing comfort<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+and power, and set him so far above all
+other created things. He found plants and
+animals for his use, and the dwellings in caves
+and holes ready made by Nature. He could
+neither build houses nor make weapons.
+The first weapon he ever used probably was
+a stone, which he could throw at small animals.
+Then he would find out that long, sharp-pointed
+sticks could be thrown like spears,
+and he also found that a long pliant piece of
+wood when bent would fly back, and in this
+he would see a means of throwing smaller
+pointed sticks like arrows, and I dare say the
+discovery of the way of making a bow with
+a string of twisted animal skin was a great
+invention, and it certainly would be a very
+valuable one. Many generations must have
+passed away before he got even as far as this.
+It is very easy for us, who see bows and arrows
+from our childhood, to understand their use at
+once: but the first human inhabitants of the
+world had to find them out for themselves.
+They began with <em>no</em> knowledge at all. The
+beasts of the field and the fruits of the Earth
+were given them, but they could <span class="allsmcap">MAKE</span> nothing.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>
+They had not even the natural covering of
+hair, or wool, or feathers, which animals and
+birds have, and they must first have clothed
+themselves with skins of these. The wants
+of their daily life were so great that they had
+no time to think of anything else, but when
+it became easier to satisfy these bodily wants
+their minds turned to other things. They must
+have seen that when the seeds and fruits of
+plants fall upon the ground they grow and produce
+the same kind of plant, but they did not
+at first think of gathering a great number of
+these seeds and sowing them in one place and
+making a garden. They could wander about
+and gather all they needed as they became
+ripe, for there were few people then. Their
+life was like that of the lilies of the field, they
+“toiled not neither did they spin,” as Christ
+says of the flowers, but when they began to
+increase in number something more was
+wanted. People began to feel something
+within them which we call “intellect,” and
+this must be satisfied. It was not enough to
+live as if they were no nobler than the animals.
+Something stirred in their minds which told
+them they must not stand still.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Creator has made both us and the
+wood and stone and metals, and has given
+to us the power to make other things out of
+them. Thus we are nearer to Him in power
+than any of the animals who cannot change the
+rough materials into other forms. We admire
+the simple and really beautiful nest of the
+bird, but we feel that our power is greater
+when we consider our splendid buildings and
+steam-engines, our ships, and our many conquests
+over difficulties. But if we did not
+use these greater powers of mind and hand
+well, we should find them grow weaker and
+weaker until we might almost lose them.</p>
+
+<p>You may easily suppose that there was a
+time when men could not write, and there
+were no books of any kind, nor any other
+means of exchanging thoughts except through
+spoken language. The earliest histories
+about the human race always speak of men
+who lived before those histories were written.
+We have nothing about the earliest men
+written by <em>themselves</em>. It is always someone
+else who writes of them, referring to their
+deeds, and to events which happened long
+before.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span></p>
+
+<p>The art of writing has grown up gradually
+and very slowly, for when the inhabitants
+of the Earth became numerous they felt the
+need of some way of expressing themselves to
+those at a distance from them, and for making
+a record of things that happened and might
+be forgotten. Some of the earliest means
+of writing were by pictures, like the picture
+writings of Mexico<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> found by the Spanish
+conquerors, and something of the same kind
+is even now used by the Chinese and
+Japanese. Their writing is made up partly
+of pictures and partly of queer signs which
+stand for the names of things, as you know if
+you have ever seen one of their books. One
+of the oldest forms of writing known is the
+hieroglyphic, which is said to have been first
+used by the Egyptians about 2,100 years
+before Christ, and another is the arrow-shaped
+writing of the Assyrians. These were cut on
+stone and metal tablets, and most of them are
+the histories of their kings. But there are
+some writings on stone in India which are
+thought to be older still. The Egyptians<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>
+made great progress in writing afterwards
+when <em>papyrus</em> was invented.<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> This is a kind
+of paper made from a reed which grows
+abundantly in the river Nile, and many of
+these papyrus writings are preserved in the
+British Museum, as well as the writings on
+stone of the Egyptians and Assyrians, and
+learned men have spelled out a great deal of
+the history of these nations from them, though
+the language is quite different from any
+spoken or written now.</p>
+
+<p>Picture writing was most likely one of
+the earliest inventions in this way: but it
+was so troublesome that signs were used to
+express the same things as the picture. For
+instance, suppose a history of a king was to be
+written. The word “king” would be shown
+by something he always wore, such as his
+crown, and this sign would become more
+simple until at last it might not be anything
+like a crown; but it would be remembered
+that the sign stood for a king all the same.
+The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, <em>aleph</em>,
+means an ox, and the letter is something like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+the shape of the head of that animal with
+its horns; and another letter, called <em>shin</em>,
+which in Hebrew means a tooth, is actually
+very like a tooth with three points. In many
+languages these signs have become so altered
+that they do not now resemble the things
+they at first stood for; but the first steps in the
+invention of written language were certainly
+made by signs representing the thing of
+which the person wished to give an idea.
+But you will learn all about these ancient
+writings from other books.</p>
+
+<p>The men whose lives I am going to
+describe lived long before any of these writings
+were invented. They <em>spoke</em> a language
+of course, though there is nothing left to show
+that they knew of any kind of writing, and they
+are called Pre-historic men because they lived
+before there were any histories either written
+by themselves or about them. But they
+could draw a little, as we know from the
+pictures of animals, birds, and fishes scratched
+upon pieces of slate, and bone, and stone found
+in their graves. Perhaps these pictures were
+memorials of their great or wise men, or showed
+that they were clever hunters, or fishermen.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>
+
+<p>They knew the use of fire. Half burnt
+bones and wood and ashes are plentiful in the
+caves where they lived. They had none of
+the means we possess for kindling fire, and
+there are only two ways by which they could
+have got it. They might have rubbed two
+pieces of very dry wood together until the
+heat lighted them, as many savages do at
+the present time; or they might have struck
+sparks from flint upon rotten wood and blown
+the spark into a flame. We may be sure that
+when once a fire was lighted they would take
+care it did not go out, and if they wanted to
+travel they would carry with them a piece of
+smouldering wood to light the fire again. I
+do not suppose that these pre-historic men
+were any more civilized than the savages of
+Australia and other countries, and I have often
+thought when looking at these savages that
+they live in almost exactly the same way as
+the earliest inhabitants of Europe did. They
+have the same shaped weapons and tools
+made of stone, and these are fixed to the
+handles in the same way. They have the
+same kinds of needles and fish-hooks made
+of bone, and they sew skins together with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+threads made from the sinews of animals.
+Thus we see men living now in many parts
+of the world who are quite as uncivilized as
+the old inhabitants of Europe, who lived
+perhaps thousands of years before the Egyptians
+and Assyrians.</p>
+
+<p>These very ancient men knew nothing
+about metals. All their tools were made of
+flint, or bone, or stone, and they were of the
+rough shape you see in the pictures on the
+next page, and it is for this reason that this
+has been called the <em>Stone Age</em>. These were
+chipped out with great trouble and labour,
+and most of them were not even polished.
+With these they had to kill animals for food,
+to cut down trees, and fight against their
+enemies. The skeleton of a mastodon was
+found in the state of Missouri in America
+about thirty-five years ago with numbers of
+these flint arrow-heads underneath and near
+it. Perhaps it had been shot at with arrows,
+and when it died the flint points fell out of its
+decaying flesh. But it is not likely that these
+pre-historic men could have killed many such
+large animals, unless they caught them in pits
+covered over with branches of trees and earth,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>into which they might fall, as elephants are
+sometimes caught in Africa.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p129" style="max-width: 38.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p129.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">X.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">
+1. <em>Flint Arrow-head.</em><br>
+2. <em>Stone Axe in handle.</em><br>
+3. <em>Flint Knife.</em><br>
+4. <em>Bone Harpoon.</em><br>
+5. <em>Bone Needles.</em><br>
+6. <em>Sceptre made of Horn.</em><br>
+7. <em>Marrow Spoon.</em><br>
+</p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Nothing shows us so well the immense
+time which must have passed since the men
+of the stone age lived as that these flint
+weapons and tools are found nearly all over
+the world, in Northern Europe, including our
+own country, in Spain, France, Italy, Greece,
+Palestine, Africa, Japan, America, &amp;c.; and
+yet none of the present inhabitants of these
+countries have any history or tradition of the
+time when they were used. Metals are now
+used instead, and there is no record of the
+time when flint only was known. We are
+quite certain however that the stone age men
+lived at the same period as the great animals
+of the Tertiary age, the mammoth, the mastodon,
+the woolly rhinoceros, the Irish stag,
+the cave bear, and others you have read of
+in former chapters, because flint and stone
+weapons are found in the same beds of earth
+with these animals.<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>Suppose one of the present Indian or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>
+African elephants with his rider were to fall
+into a river and they were to sink to the
+bottom and be covered with mud, and suppose
+his rider had in his pocket some of our sovereigns.
+If that elephant should be accidentally
+dug up thousands of years to come, when most
+likely all elephants will have died off the earth,
+people would know for certain, from the date
+and figure of the Queen on the money, that
+elephants were used by the English in this
+reign, even if all our books and monuments
+had perished, and a new people inhabited the
+Earth. Something of the same kind has happened
+to prove to us that the stone-age men
+saw the mammoth alive. In one of their
+graves there is a slice of a mammoth’s great
+back tooth with a beautiful picture of the
+animal, with his bristly hair, scratched on the
+ivory, and there are also many of the flint
+and stone weapons which show that the
+skeleton in the grave was that of a primeval
+man. This little picture tells its tale
+more faithfully than any history. It is all
+the more certain to tell it truly because it was
+never <em>meant</em> to tell one. When that man
+was buried with this sign that he was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>
+mighty hunter of the mammoth, or an artist,
+no one could imagine that he would ever be
+dug up to show us, who come so long afterwards,
+that he saw the mammoth roaming
+through the forests of the far away past.
+There can be no doubt that it is a very good
+drawing of the mammoth with its long turned-up
+tusks, like those in the picture at the
+beginning of the book.</p>
+
+<p>In another place a picture of a fight
+between some reindeer scratched upon a
+piece of slate has been found. This was in a
+cave in France, and it, as well as the numbers
+of bones of these animals in the caves, shows
+that the reindeer, which now only inhabits the
+Arctic regions, must have been common then
+in France. You will see drawings of both
+these on page <a href="#i_p135-1">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p>These primeval people built no houses.
+They lived in natural caves, and scattered the
+remains of their food about the floor, so that
+we know what they ate. Among the animals
+they used for food were the horse, the reindeer,
+the ox, the cave-lion and bear, the wolf, the
+hyena, the goat, the hare and several others,
+besides salmon and other fish. They were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>
+very fond of the marrow of the bones, which
+they cracked with stone hammers, and had
+little spoons made of bone with which to pick
+it out.</p>
+
+<p>They had places for making flint weapons
+too. At Cissbury Camp, near Worthing,
+there is one of their old workshops. There
+are galleries dug into the chalk where they
+got the flints, and there are thousands of chips
+of flint lying about, with half finished arrow-heads,
+and some of the tools they dug with.
+They had no spades or pickaxes; but they
+used the broad, flat, shoulder-blade bone of
+the ox as a spade, and the sharp brow antler
+of a deer’s horn for a pickaxe, to get these
+flints out with. It must have been very hard
+work for them, because bone spades and horn
+pickaxes would soon wear out, and would not
+be nearly so useful as ours made of iron.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p135-1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p135-1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">XI.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Picture of Mammoth Scratched on Ivory.</em></p>
+</figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p135-2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p135-2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent"><em>Fight between Reindeer Scratched on Slate.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>It is difficult to be certain how these stone-age
+people cooked their food. Of course
+they could have roasted it, and the half-burnt
+bones in some caves show that they
+did so; but in some caves in France there is
+not a single burnt bone to be found. In
+these French cave dwellings, too, there are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>no pieces of earthenware, as there are in
+some others; so that the people could not
+have boiled it, unless they had wooden
+pots and dropped red-hot stones into the
+water in them until the meat got boiled, as
+some savages do now. Or they might have
+cooked it under the hot ashes.</p>
+
+<p>The people who used earthenware must
+have made more progress. It is easy to
+understand how they made this useful discovery.
+Suppose they had lighted a fire
+upon a damp clay soil, the earth would get
+baked hard and crack off in pieces, and they
+would see that this soil could be worked in
+the hands while soft into the shape of pans
+and dishes, which could be dried quite hard
+in the sun or baked in hot ashes, just as
+boys make clay marbles now. They could
+live much more comfortably even with these
+rough earthenware things, and cook their
+food more conveniently; but they still used
+the stone and flint tools and weapons, and
+iron was still unknown to them.</p>
+
+<p>The people of whom I have been speaking
+are principally the men of the First Stone
+Age, when the art of polishing tools and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+weapons had not been found out. They
+simply chipped these things out of the flints
+and left them very rough; but the men of the
+next, or Second Stone Age, made great improvements.
+They ground their flint knives
+and axes with other stones, and rubbed them
+down to sharp edges and points, so that they
+must have been much more useful for killing
+and cutting up the animals they hunted. All
+their bone and horn tools are much better
+made, and sometimes ornamented prettily
+with marks cut upon them. The Second
+Stone Age men evidently wore clothing,
+most probably made of the skins of animals—for
+the long strips of bone with a hole
+at one end which you see in the picture
+could not have been used for any other
+purpose, except to draw threads through
+something. The threads were very likely
+either the sinews of animals pulled out of the
+flesh, or thin strips of their skins, or perhaps
+the inner bark of a tree twisted into a kind
+of string. In the colder parts of Europe
+and America these ancient people would
+need some protection from the weather.
+How then did the people of the First Stone<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>
+Age manage, if they had no bone needles,
+as I think they had not, with which to make
+clothing? They must have wrapped themselves
+in the skins just as they came from
+the backs of the animals.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy to be always sure, when we
+find a cave and all these relics of pre-historic
+man, whether the inhabitants belonged to the
+First or the Second Stone Age. Sometimes
+there are signs of polishing and grinding on
+the tools, and then we may suppose that men
+were gradually getting more skilful, until they
+finished off all their weapons beautifully.
+But there is such a very great difference in
+the perfection of these useful articles found
+in some places and those found in others
+that we have no doubt men made slow progress,
+from the rough or First Stone Age,
+to the polished or Second Stone Age.</p>
+
+<p>In neither the first nor second stone period
+had men yet learned to build any kind of
+habitations. They lived in caves simply, like
+wild animals. On the banks of the river
+Vezère in France, which has cut its way
+deeply through the rock, there are some
+celebrated caves once inhabited by pre-historic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>
+men, and some of them are very large.
+They were most likely hollowed out in the
+cliff by water, and many generations of men
+lived here. In one of them four human
+skeletons were found, with plenty of stone and
+flint tools, besides the bones of the mammoth
+and lion, reindeer and other animals. The
+mammoth then as well as the reindeer lived
+at that time in the valley of the Vezère.
+There is no doubt that these caves were inhabited
+at separate times by people who used
+only the roughest and simplest stone tools,
+and by others who had made some progress
+and could polish their tools and make them of
+bone and could scratch pictures of animals
+upon slips of bone and slate. It is curious that
+all these drawings are side-view drawings, and
+they are only outlines, just like the drawings
+of children now, and the Esquimaux of the
+Arctic regions; because these people, although
+they were grown up, had not discovered the
+art of drawing in perspective and shading
+the figures. Still the pictures are wonderfully
+true to nature, and must have been copied
+from living animals. There is no earthenware
+in any of these caves, so that the useful art of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>
+making pottery had not been discovered,
+neither is there any in the caves in Switzerland,
+where the bones of the mammoth, lion,
+and rhinoceros are also found, and the tools
+and weapons are much the same as those in
+the French caverns. It is impossible to say
+whether the cave-dwellers of France and
+Switzerland lived at the same time exactly,
+but they were in about the same condition of
+civilization, and they must both have been
+quite familiar with the appearance of the
+mammoth and lion, and other animals, which
+are not mentioned in any history, however
+old it may be, as inhabitants of these
+countries.</p>
+
+<p>A discovery has lately been made in
+France of a large cavern near Belfort, in the
+limestone rock, which has been covered up
+for ages. The quarrymen while cutting out
+the stone came upon a small opening leading
+into a very large cave, in which there was
+a great quantity of human skeletons and
+bones and some beautifully ornamented vases,
+polished stone bracelets, and a mat of plaited
+rushes. To these people, then, the arts of
+pottery and weaving were known, and this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>
+was probably one of their burying-places.
+They were evidently much more civilized
+than the ancient people of the valley of the
+Vezère; but this cave must also be of a
+great age, and its inhabitants have left no
+record of their history in any kind of
+writing.</p>
+
+<p>Quite lately, too, we have learned something
+of the early races of man in Colorado.
+Many of the caves in that country have been
+altered and made more like regular houses,
+and some appear even to have been cut
+out of the rock entirely by human hands;
+and in the plains there are ruins of large
+cities.</p>
+
+<p>Though still in the stone age, for all the
+weapons yet found among these ruins are
+of stone, the Colorado people were more
+civilized than the stone-age people of the
+Vezère caverns, because they had begun to
+build and knew how to make pottery. It is
+strange, too, that the present natives of Colorado
+are not so civilized as the early people,
+and if they have descended from them they
+have not improved, but rather the contrary.
+There are other caverns in various parts of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>
+the world containing these curious relics of
+races long since passed away, but some of
+the principal have been mentioned, enough
+perhaps to interest you and show you that
+men were living in Europe together with the
+large animals of the Tertiary period, and that
+they had made very little progress in the arts
+and manufactures, and had not even begun to
+build the roughest houses.</p>
+
+<p>In many parts of the world even now
+there are savages nearly as uncivilized as the
+cave-dwellers of Europe were then. When
+Captain Cook visited New Zealand, more
+than a hundred years ago, the natives there
+had nothing but stone and bone tools, very like
+those found in the European caverns, and the
+inhabitants of some of the islands in the Pacific
+Ocean still use stone axes and hammers
+and bone needles.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> Captain Moresby, too,
+who made a voyage to the south-east coast
+of New Guinea a few years ago, tells us
+that the natives have beautiful stone axes,
+but they were so ignorant of the use of iron
+that they refused to give him one of their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>
+stone axes for a new iron hatchet which he
+offered them. No doubt the stone weapon
+cost a great deal of labour and patience to
+make, and perhaps the iron one was made by
+machinery in a few minutes, and was really
+more useful, but the native had proved his
+own axe and knew nothing of the iron one,
+so that it is no wonder that he refused it.
+But what a history these two axes tell—the
+stone and the iron! The stone shows us
+man in his childhood, and the iron man in his
+manhood, and what an immensely long time
+there is between the two. How much
+thought, and trial and failure, and patience
+and industry, were spent by mankind before
+the stone axe grew into the iron!</p>
+
+<p>In Europe man has long since grown out
+of his childhood, but in many parts of the
+world he is no more civilized than the men
+who saw the mammoth crashing through the
+forests of England and France, and heard
+the lion roar at night on the banks of
+the Thames, and watched the hippopotamus
+swimming across the river at Westminster.
+It is most likely, then, that Europe and parts
+of Asia and America were inhabited long<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+before those places where men are even now
+in the stone age—such as the islands in the
+Pacific Ocean, New Guinea, Australia, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>What a life the pre-historic men of Europe
+must have lived! Here they were surrounded
+by huge dangerous animals, and had no
+means of protecting themselves against them
+but with these rough stone weapons. Where
+London now stands with its miles of streets
+and busy life there was a mighty forest, and
+the mammoth and rhinoceros tramped through
+it by day, and the lion and hyena hunted
+the deer at night. When the pre-historic men
+came down to the banks of the Thames in
+the day-time to spear salmon, they saw the
+hippopotamus plunging about in the water
+among the rushes, sweeping the long grass
+into their wide mouths, and swimming from
+side to side with their young ones perched
+upon their necks. It must have been a
+grand sight, but a fearful one too, and it is
+no wonder that men thought the caves the
+only safe places to live in.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in India the elephants come
+into the villages at night and throw down
+wooden houses and kill people, and they are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+very much feared, so that we can suppose
+how much more terrible the mammoth might
+have been to the uncivilized cave-dwellers.
+If they shot at him with the flint-pointed
+arrows they could scarcely hurt him, and it
+is more likely that they got out of his way as
+quickly as possible whenever they met him,
+and took good care never to interfere with
+the lion and rhinoceros.</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE LAKE-DWELLERS.</h3>
+
+<p>Among the earliest inhabitants of Europe,
+there were some who did not live in caves;
+but I think they must have lived a long time
+after the cave-dwellers, when they built their
+houses out in the middle of the lakes.
+These houses were built in a very curious
+way, and the remains of them have been discovered
+in Ireland and Scotland, Switzerland
+and other countries. The people carried
+quantities of stones, and earth, and sticks out
+into the lake and let them sink to the bottom.
+Then when they had piled up enough to make
+an island, they laid wood across and set up
+their huts, and lived there surrounded by water.
+These were very poor houses of course; but
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>when men had begun to build for themselves,
+they would find how much more comfortable
+they were than in damp and dark caves.
+They must have had some kind of boats or
+canoes, or they could not have passed between
+their lake-dwellings and the land unless they
+swam to them; but I do not think that any of
+these boats have been found. Perhaps they
+were made of the dried skins of animals
+stretched over wooden frames, as I have seen
+savages make boats.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="i_p148" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p148.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">XII.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>Lake-Dwellings.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>There was another way of building these
+lake-dwellings, and a better way too. Long
+poles were driven into the earth at the bottom
+of the water, and when the builders had got
+enough of these together they laid other
+poles across them, and built their huts on
+this floor above the water. People are living
+now in much the same way near the Orinoco
+river in South America, in New Guinea, and in
+Central Africa.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> The land all round is covered
+with water from the overflowing of the rivers,
+which are very large, and the huts are built up
+on these poles out of the way of it. The lake-dwellers
+of Europe would thus be safer in their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>
+houses from dangerous animals than if they
+were on land. They were more civilized than
+the cave-dwellers, but still a great many of their
+tools and weapons were of stone and bone;
+yet we know that they had made wonderful
+progress, because they had learned to make
+pottery, and even to weave cloths out of hemp
+or flax. They had most likely begun to plant
+and cultivate the land, too, for corn is found
+about these dwellings, and the bones of
+domestic animals are very numerous. They
+had left the cave-dwellers a long way behind
+in many things, in wearing artificial clothing,
+in cultivating the land, and in keeping domestic
+animals; but their implements—that
+is, their weapons and tools—were not much
+improved, and were very much like those of
+the cave-dwellers, though better finished and
+more polished than some of theirs.</p>
+
+<p>But not all the articles used by the lake
+people were of stone and bone. Some of those
+who lived in the Swiss lakes had ornaments,
+such as bracelets and hair-pins, made of the
+metal called bronze, and no doubt they made
+spear-heads of the metal, because they would
+look to usefulness before ornament.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p>
+
+<p>Now you see how these people seem to
+have lived: first the old stone age men, then
+those of the newer or polished stone age, and
+lastly the lake-dwellers. The people of both
+the first and second stone ages certainly saw
+the mammoth, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, lion,
+and reindeer alive in France, Switzerland, and
+England; but when the lake-dwellings were
+built, all these animals, except perhaps the
+reindeer, had died, and most of the animals
+were the same as they are now. None of these
+people have left us any kind of history whatever,
+except that which their simple works tell
+us, their flint and bone weapons, and their
+dwellings. They have set up no gigantic
+monuments like the Egyptians or the Druids.
+They thought of no men to come after them
+who would take an interest in their ways; but
+it is fortunate that what they did make was
+of such lasting materials as stone and flint, or
+we should have known next to nothing about
+their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to say how many thousands
+of years may have passed before the
+rough stone weapons were replaced by the
+polished stone, or the cave was exchanged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
+for an artificial house in a lake; but you must
+feel in your minds that the time was immense,
+and the more we study the ways and works
+of pre-historic man, the more certain we
+become that it is longer than the whole time
+that has passed since men first began to use
+any kind of writing.</p>
+
+
+<h3>KITCHEN-MIDDENS.</h3>
+
+<p>I dare say you have seen untidy people
+in country places, and even in towns, throw
+oyster-shells and broken dishes and dirt outside
+their doors until quite a heap is formed.
+This is called a “midden,” and the habit of
+doing this is a very old one. We learn just
+a little more of the history of man from great
+middens made by ancient people in several
+countries. They were first discovered in
+Denmark, and since then they have been
+found in Scotland, Brazil, and New Zealand.
+They are sometimes very large, and must
+have been used by the whole village as places
+to throw the refuse of their cookery in. When
+these heaps have been dug into all sorts of
+things have been found in them—the shells of
+oysters and mussels, bones of fishes, birds, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>
+animals, pieces of broken earthenware, little
+ornaments, stone axes, arrow-heads, wood
+ashes, burnt bones, and other odds and ends.
+In Brazil many of these kitchen-middens are
+on the sea shore, and it seems as if the people
+who made them came there to live on the
+shell-fish, for the shells are the same as those
+living in the sea close by now. In New
+Zealand the middens contain many of the
+bones of the Moa, which was described in
+“The Animal Part,” and has now perished, and
+these are cracked in such a manner that the
+people evidently wanted to get at the marrow
+in them, and it shows too that this gigantic
+bird was common in New Zealand then.
+The midden makers seemed to have lived in
+the open air, and wherever food was most
+plentiful. Perhaps they built huts of the
+bark and small branches of trees like the
+Australian savages, but such houses would
+not last. We only know of the life of the
+midden makers from these heaps. Their
+weapons are of the same kind and pattern as
+those of the Second Stone Age, but they had
+learned to make rough earthenware dishes
+and basins, and some pieces of a woven<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>
+material have been found, and pieces of wood
+and bone worked with a little skill. Whether
+they lived after or before the lake-dwellers I
+cannot say, but I should think about the
+same time.</p>
+
+<p>These pre-historic people, nevertheless,
+were not always thinking of making things
+which were useful. They thought too of
+making ornaments, many of which are found
+in their dwellings and graves. Like ourselves,
+they had an idea that little trinkets improved
+their appearance. In one grave a skeleton
+was found with a small pile of shells under
+its neck, which no doubt had been strung
+together as a necklace, and when the string
+rotted the shells parted and fell in a heap under
+the head, to be a memorial of that ancient man
+or woman’s possession of the same feelings as
+our own. Various little articles, too, found
+about the lake-dwellings show that people
+liked to decorate themselves.</p>
+
+<p>We shall never know what language they
+spoke, but they must have been able to tell
+their thoughts to one another. It was most
+likely a simple language with few words as
+names for things and a simple grammar, like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+the language of savages, because they had
+not so many things to talk about as we have.
+The names of animals would perhaps be
+imitated from their cries and the noises they
+made. These cries would be among the most
+familiar sounds to them, and when they
+wished to speak of some animal the simplest
+way would be to imitate the noise it generally
+makes. If we think of our own language, we
+shall see how very likely this was. We have
+many such words. We teach our children the
+names of animals by the sounds they make.
+The dog we call “bow-wow,” the cow “moo-moo,”
+the duck “quack-quack,” and many
+other names of the same kind which you will
+think of yourselves. At the present time
+even the name by which the Egyptians call
+the donkey has almost exactly the same
+sound as our “hee-haw.” This trick of
+doubling or repeating the sound, too, is very
+common among savages, who are as far behind
+us as the pre-historic men were. The
+natives of Australia give these double names
+to a great many animals and things, and
+sometimes do the same with English words.
+They call fish “ningy-ningy,” and a certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+tree the “bunya-bunya,” and their language
+is full of such words. But it is not only the
+names of things which have been made in
+this way. Verbs as well as nouns have grown
+up thus. When we whisper to one another,
+that word imitates the low sound we make.</p>
+
+<p>I shall leave you to trace the natural origin
+of the following words, and think how much of
+man’s spoken language is taken from common
+sounds. Thus we have roar, shriek, whistle,
+hiss, sigh, sing, ring, thump, bump, clash,
+clang, bang, twang, clap, smack, slap, smash,
+swish, swirl, gong, thong, boom, bellow,
+batter, chatter, clatter, snap, snip, whip,
+gurgle, shiver, quiver, rumble, roll, rattle,
+prattle, and a hundred more. Words thus
+derived from familiar sounds abound in all
+languages, and they, no doubt, are the easy
+steps by which men climbed to a more complicated
+speech. The earliest men must
+have been obliged to pay great attention to
+animals and birds, which have voices of their
+own; for to hunt and catch them was the
+principal occupation of their lives; therefore,
+when speaking of them to one another, they
+would naturally call them by names resembling<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>
+the sounds they made. Our verbs
+“to squeak” and “to squeal” are certainly
+taken from the cries of animals when in pain;
+but I have said enough to show you how
+language grew up among pre-historic people.</p>
+
+<p>We do not know for certain that they had
+any musical instruments, but they would hear
+the sighing of the wind among the trees, and
+it would almost certainly be found out that
+blowing down a hollow stick or reed, open at
+one end and closed at the other, would make
+a whistle; but if they used any of these
+things they would not last like the stone tools,
+and have decayed away; and we do know
+that they had begun to draw upon such imperishable
+materials as bone and slate.</p>
+
+<p>There is a very interesting specimen of a
+human fossil in the British Museum, which
+you ought to go and see, if you can; but in
+case you are not able there is a drawing of it
+on page <a href="#i_p159">159</a>.<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> This specimen was brought
+to England about the year 1814. Others
+like it have since been found imbedded in the
+hard breccia limestone rock at the same place
+on the shore of the island of Guadaloupe.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+The skeleton most likely was that of a
+woman, from the shape of some of the bones,
+and most probably was of the race of Caribs,
+of whom there are none living now. Perhaps
+this was originally a burying place of the
+ancient inhabitants of the island, and when
+the sea washed the small broken pieces of
+shells and corals over it (all of which contain
+lime) they hardened into breccia rock, and
+the skeleton became completely imbedded in
+it. This must have taken a very long time,
+at all events; but I do not think the Guadaloupe
+fossils are as old as the people who
+lived in the caves in France. Some little
+ornaments and articles of human workmanship
+are found with these skeletons, which
+show that the people to whom they belonged
+were still in the Stone Age. There is very
+little to judge from when we wish to get some
+idea of the time these fossils have been in
+this breccia: but at this particular place
+the rock is formed pretty quickly, as we can
+see; and it is quite likely that these skeletons
+were buried there long after the mammoth,
+rhinoceros, and hippopotamus died out of
+Europe. However, they are the most complete
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>specimens we have of any fossil human
+beings. In looking at the drawing you will
+see the leg bones and hips, part of the backbone,
+the ribs of one side, and an arm bone;
+but you see no skull, because the bones of
+the skull are very thin, and have become
+crushed down into the limestone. In one of
+these fossils, which they have in Paris, taken
+from near the same place, the bones are
+much more distinct, and part of the lower
+jaw with some teeth in it can be seen. These
+fossil men no doubt lived before the period
+of written human history began; but they
+are not considered to be at all the oldest of
+pre-historic men.</p>
+<br>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="i_p159" style="max-width: 39.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/i_p159.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p class="center no-indent">XIII.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent"><em>The Guadaloupe Human Fossil.</em></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+<br>
+
+<p>Two periods in the life of mankind followed
+all these long-lost and forgotten people,
+and they are called the Bronze Age and the
+Iron Age; but now <em>history</em> comes in, and
+there are plenty of old records and books to
+tell you about these. Bronze is a mixed
+metal of copper and tin, and it was used by
+the oldest nations who have left any histories—the
+Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans.
+It was better than stone because it
+could be made sharper and would not chip,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+and swords and armour, vases, axes, hammers,
+needles, &amp;c., were made of it.<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Stone Age is beyond all history, the
+Bronze begins with it, and the Iron Age
+began at some distant time before the dawn of
+authentic history. Thus we are told, in Genesis
+iv. 22, that Tubal Cain taught people to make
+it. It was used also by the Egyptians for perhaps
+2,000 years before the Christian era;
+but the real Iron Age is that in which we are
+living now. We can, indeed, make all metals
+much better than any of the older nations.</p>
+
+<p>But there is a wide gap between the time
+when people left off using stone and discovered
+bronze and iron; and if one of the
+Druids could come to life he might help us to
+fill it up, because those old British priests had
+many secrets, which they told to one another
+from generation to generation.</p>
+
+<p>If the Spanish conquerors had not destroyed
+the civilization of Mexico and Peru, we
+might know something of the discovery of
+the metals there, and the people of India and
+China must have used them long ago; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>
+the first use of metal in any country where it
+was found out would most likely be before
+the people had begun to put their language
+into any kind of writing, so that the time would
+be forgotten among the many scraps of lost
+knowledge which we have tried to collect from
+the remains of the industry of pre-historic man.</p>
+
+<p>We have seen how much these ancient
+people differed from us in their civilization,
+and how far they were behind us in everything;
+but we must not suppose that they
+were very different in bodily size and shape.
+Some of their skulls might have belonged to
+a philosopher, or they might have contained
+the thoughtless brains of a savage. The
+skulls from the Cromagnon and Engis caves
+are quite equal in size and shape to those of
+several uncivilized, and even of some civilized
+races of the present time, and there are
+people in all large cities whose heads are not
+better formed. Though the outward signs of
+their civilization then were so different from
+ours, it is not certain that their mental
+capacity was much less.</p>
+
+<p>A race possessing considerable civilization
+may, we know, pass away, as the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>
+Assyrians and the Pyramid builders have.
+In one of the Pacific islands—Easter Island—a
+thousand miles from the nearest land,
+there are hundreds of carved images of
+stone, fifty or sixty feet high, and weighing
+perhaps a hundred tons each. The people
+who made these must have been very
+numerous and must have had considerable
+skill. Yet they have passed away. The arts
+of Nineveh and Babylon have only lately
+become known, so that, you see, the works of
+a race may easily become hidden from us
+who follow. Quite lately, too, the works of a
+partly civilized people have been discovered
+in Ohio in America. There are there
+hundreds of mounds and earth embankments
+forming fortified camps. Some of
+them are several miles round, and they could
+only have been made by a very numerous
+and intelligent people who knew something
+about geometry; for the circles, squares, and
+angles of these earthworks are quite as
+correct as we could make them. Among the
+multitude of things found here are copper
+tools made by hammering, ornamental
+pottery, silver beads, plates of mica with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>
+scrolls and designs engraved on them, and
+carefully carved pieces of stone. These
+carvings are most curious and excellently
+finished. They represent human heads and
+many animals, such as the bear, otter, wolf,
+beaver, raccoon, frog, rattlesnake, heron, crow,
+&amp;c. A people, then, who could do these
+things and took pleasure in doing them must
+have possessed great intelligence and a
+knowledge of things far beyond a simple
+state. They even had religious ideas, such
+as they were, for they had places for sacrifice.
+All their works are now overgrown by forests,
+but it is impossible to mistake them; yet the
+native Indians of Ohio living now have no
+idea that such a people lived in their country
+before them, and no tradition at all about a
+people whose civilization was so far superior
+to their own.</p>
+
+<p>We may come nearer to our own times,
+and look at the Assyrians and Egyptians.
+Until quite recently nothing was known about
+the Assyrians except what could be learned
+from the few references made to them in
+Scripture and some ancient writers; but Mr.
+Layard dug up their cities, and found that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>
+they possessed the arts of building, sculpture,
+working in metals, and a written language.
+All this was buried under the sand of a
+desert! Then there is the great Pyramid
+of Egypt, built in a way that we could not
+surpass, and with much knowledge of geometry
+and other sciences.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> The men who
+designed and constructed these works could
+not have lived among a half-barbarous people;
+and as these are the highest works of the
+people, how much there must have been
+that went before, of which there is no trace
+now, when Assyria and Egypt were in <em>their</em>
+age of stone axes and flint arrow-heads.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that the Stone-Age men
+of Europe were nearly so civilized. At all
+events, they have not left any such imperishable
+monuments as the gigantic images of
+Easter Island, the earthworks of the Ohio
+people, or the sculptures, writings, and buildings
+of the Assyrians and Egyptians; but they
+might have been more civilized than they
+seem to have been from their simple weapons
+and tools. They might have made many<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>
+things which were perishable, and have been
+destroyed by time—things which would have
+given us a higher belief in their intelligence
+and civilization.</p>
+
+<p>The past history of the human race may
+be compared to the rise and fall of the tide.
+Wave after wave has risen higher and higher
+on the everlasting shore of Time, and when
+the tide was at its highest it has fallen again
+slowly, to rise again and again in the same
+way through many ages. We know that
+man may rise slowly from a simple condition
+to much civilization and power, and may
+again sink back almost to barbarism, as has
+been the case with the people of whom we
+have been speaking, and then again a new
+civilization may grow up. It is possible that
+all now savage nations are the sinking descendants
+of some, in comparison, once civilized
+people. Modern nations are taking up
+the ground of savages all over the world, and
+soon there will be no trace of these simple
+people. Thus it may have been with mankind
+throughout all the time during which
+they have occupied the earth, and so it may
+be perhaps again.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> A fine Mexican MS. on diapered cloth, with figures and
+mystical signs, has lately been added to the MS. department
+of the British Museum.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> Some fine examples of papyrus writings on the North-west
+Staircase, Upper Floor.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> British Antiquities Room, upper floor, Middle and Upper
+Shelf-cases, Nos. 1, 2, and 5-12, flint and stone implements.
+Table-case B, horn implements from French caves and Swiss
+lake-dwellings.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> Examples of stone implements of New Zealanders in
+Ethnographical Room, Cases No. 45-48, upper floor.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> In Lake Mohrya. <em>Across Africa</em>, by V. L. Cameron.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> At the end of Room VI., opposite the door, North Gallery.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> See examples in the Bronze Room, upper floor, British
+Museum.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> Built of nummulitic limestone, composed of shells of
+foraminifera. See Case 15, Room V., North Gallery.</p>
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONCLUSION"><em>CONCLUSION.</em></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent"><span class="smcap">I have</span> now put “The Puzzle of Life” together
+as well as I can, and there is not much
+more to say. You must do the rest for yourselves
+by going to the Museums, where all
+the pieces are collected, and seeing them with
+your own eyes. When you stand before
+these silent witnesses to the great age of our
+Earth, and all that is on it, you will feel how
+wonderful the story they tell is. They have
+no words to speak to you, but there is a power
+in your own minds which interprets their history
+through your own thoughts. They are
+only lumps of rock and lifeless bones, but
+they seem to say to you, “We are living again
+now, because we are teaching you a lesson
+which the great Builder of this Universe
+wishes you to learn from us. There is not a
+stone or fossil among us but it has its tale
+to tell—a tale of time and tide, and long past<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>
+ages, and innumerable changes, and a life that
+was, and progress from a lower to a higher
+existence. We have obeyed the same eternal
+laws of one Creator from the beginning,
+as all things will to the end of time. We
+have opened the great Book of Nature from
+the first page of the ‘life-dawn animal’ to the
+last, on which the hand of the Almighty has
+written the name of Man—his most perfect
+work. We, you, and all things which have
+lived and will live, have bodies made of
+particles which will be returned to the Earth,
+no single atom of which has been destroyed
+since the first, but has been fashioned over
+and over again into innumerable forms of
+tree and flower, of gossamer-winged insect
+and towering mammoth, throughout the long
+ages in which our Globe has known day and
+night, cold and heat, summer and winter.”</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing sad, if we look at it
+rightly, in this constant succession of life and
+death. It is</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent20">A moulding</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of forms, and a wondrous birth,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And a growing and fair unfolding</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of life from life, and life from death.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>
+    <div class="verse indent0">For death, a mother benign,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Transformeth but destroyeth not,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And the new thing fair of the old is wrought.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="right fs90">
+<span class="smcap">G. F. Armstrong.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>Is it not worth while then to listen to these
+stories of the Earth—to spell them out for
+ourselves? They are written everywhere,—in
+the mountains and valleys, the rivers and
+seas, on the hard faces of granite cliffs, on the
+rounded pebbles of the sea beach, and even
+in the finest dust of the roads. We have not
+to go far to hear them: every foot-step on
+the ground covers a chapter great or small in
+the universal history, and the stone walls of
+our houses could speak with ten thousand
+tongues of all they witnessed in their long
+life on the floor of an ancient ocean.</p>
+
+<p>We can scarcely have a more pleasant
+occupation and greater interest than in searching
+for and putting together the pieces of this
+wonderful and beautiful puzzle, and in doing
+our utmost to “Summon from the shadowy
+Past the forms that once have been.”</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<ul class="index">
+<li class="ifrst">Age of bronze, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">of iron, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">of reptiles, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Aleph, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Amber, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ammonites, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#i_p097">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Animal Part, the, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">animals of coal period, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ants, white, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Arctic climate, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">expedition, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Archæopteryx, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#i_p093-1">93</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Australian savages, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Babylon and Nineveh, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bear, grisly, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Beginning of life, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bird forms, earliest, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">reptiles, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blacklead, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boulders carried by ice, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bogwood, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Boiling springs, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bronze, age of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">implements in British Museum, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brighton Downs, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Burning mountains, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Calamites, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cañons of Colorado, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Caves of Engis and Cromagnon, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">near Belfort and of Switzerland, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">of the Vezère, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cetiosaurus, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chalk, nature of, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">pits, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">ammonites and foraminifera in, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">period, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">under the ocean, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">“Challenger” expedition, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Changes have been gradual, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cissbury camp, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clay, London, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">and mud, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Climate, Arctic, and of coal formations, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Club-mosses, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clothing, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Coal beds, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in Arctic regions, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plants of the, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">is fossil wood, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">is sunlight compressed, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Colorado, the people in, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Compressed plants, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Conclusion, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cookery, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Corals, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Creation, the plan of, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cretaceous period, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cromagnon and Engis, caves of, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Dawn of life, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plant, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Denudation, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dinornis, specimens of, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dinosaurus, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dinotherium, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Drawings, pre-historic, <a href="#i_p135-1">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dwellings and food of men, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Early histories, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plant life, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Earth, early history of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">interior of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">intense heat of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">climate of, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">not yet fit for man, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>‘foraminifera earth’, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Earthquakes, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Earthworks of Ohio, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Easter island monuments, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Egypt, monuments of, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Eodendron, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Eophyton, <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Eozöon, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">First weapons, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fish-lizards, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fishes, fossil, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Flint, origin of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in chalk, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">weapons, where found, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">tool manufactory, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Foraminifera, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">‘foraminifera earth’, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">drawings of, <a href="#i_p097">97</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">specimens of, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Forests under the sea, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fossil, derivation of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">plants, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">sunlight, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">footprints, <a href="#i_p083">83</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">human, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#i_p159">159</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Food and dwellings, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Footprints, fossil, <a href="#i_p083">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Flying reptiles, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Geological part, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Geology, derivation of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Geysers, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gigantic animals, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">birds, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Glaciers and icebergs, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Granite, raised, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">appearance of, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gravel, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Great Irish Stag, drawing, &amp;c., of, <a href="#i_p108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guadaloupe human fossil, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Heat of the Earth, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hebrew letters, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hesperornis, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hippopotamus in England, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Histories, early, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Human part, the, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">fossils, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ice age, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">more than one, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Icebergs and glaciers, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ichthyornis, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ichthyosaurus, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Implements, flint and stone, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">bronze, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">India, elephants in, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Insects in coal forests, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Irish stag, <a href="#i_p108">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Islands appear and disappear, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Jet, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jurassic age, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Kangaroo, fossil, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kitchen-middens, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Labyrinthodon, <a href="#Page_2">2</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lake-dwellers, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">dwellings in Europe, Africa, Asia, and New Guinea, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Language, origin of; and of pre-historic man, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laurentian rocks, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lena river, mammoth found, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Life, the dawn of, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">‘life-dawn animal’, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lignite, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lion, English sabre-toothed, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Mammalia, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mammoth, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102-3</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">bones of, in Siberia, Asia, North America, &amp;c.;</li>
+<li class="isub1">drawing of, on ivory, <a href="#i_p135-1">135</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in Essex, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">skull of, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Man and his works, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">his earliest inventions, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">mammoth, mastodon, reindeer, &amp;c., contemporary with, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">pre-historic, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">dwellings and food of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marsupial animal, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mastodon, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in Europe, America, India, &amp;c., <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">in Missouri, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">skeleton of, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Megalosaurus, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Megatherium, in South America, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">drawing of, 112;</li>
+<li class="isub1">account of, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">skeleton of, in British Museum, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mexican writings, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Middens, kitchen, <a href="#Page_152">152-4</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">makers, life of, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moa, <a href="#Page_115">115-16</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Monkeys, fossil, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>at Gibraltar, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Monuments of Easter Island, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">of Egypt and Assyria, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mountains, burning, and covered with snow, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moresby, Captain, in New Guinea, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">New Guinea, stone age of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">New Zealand dinornis, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">moa, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">stone age of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nineveh and Babylon, ruins, &amp;c., of, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Norway, raised terraces of, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ohio, earthworks of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oolite, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Origin of language, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Papyrus writings, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paris, built of shells, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Parts, the, are called fossils, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Past life, the signs of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peat, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Plan of creation, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Plants of coal forests, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Plesiosaurus, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pottery, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pre-historic art, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">drawings, <a href="#i_p135-1">135</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">man, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">weapons and tools, <a href="#i_p129">129</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pterodactyl, derivation of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">description of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Puzzle, the framework of, <a href="#Page_1">1-16</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">parts of, where found, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pyrenees, when raised, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Rain-drops, marks of, <a href="#i_p083">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Reindeer, drawing of, on slate, <a href="#i_p135-1">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Reptiles, the age of, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rhinoceros in England, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rocks, raising of the;</li>
+<li class="isub1">how placed, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">carried by ice, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Sandstone, formation of, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Old Red, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">New Red, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Slate hardened mud, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sponges, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Star-fish, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stone age, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">first stone age, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">second, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">of New Guinea and New Zealand, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Subsidence, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Succession of formations, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sucklers, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sunlight, fossil, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Tertiary period, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Time, the work of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tools, polished and rough, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trilobite, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Upheaval and depression, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Vegetable part, the, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vertebrata, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Volcanoes and earthquakes, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+
+<li class="ifrst">Water, a powerful tool of Nature, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">thrown out of the earth, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Weapons, early, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">and tools, where found, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Whales, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">World, early history of the, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">size and shape, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">materials of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">heat of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Work, the, of time, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Writing, origin of, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">Mexican, Egyptian, and Assyrian, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">on papyrus, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
+<li class="isub1">by signs, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+</ul>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80 wsp lh">
+LONDON: PRINTED BY<br>
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br>
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET<br>
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="OPINIONS_OF_THE_PRESS">OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 15%">
+<img src="images/f011.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<p>‘The present little work, which is specially addressed to children,
+is written in so pleasant and easy a style, and its descriptions of
+life on the earth are on the whole so simple and accurate, that we
+can heartily recommend it to the attention of those who seek such
+a guide. The illustrations are good, and the general appearance of
+the book such that it may compare most favourably with other
+primers of geology.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Geological Magazine.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘Written in clear and simple style, especially attractive to
+children. It includes an account of pre-historic man, and shows in
+many other ways that the writer is familiar with some of the
+latest phases of geological thought.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Academy.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The avowed object of this charming little book is to place the
+results of these researches within the grasp of children, by presenting
+them in language at once clear, simple, and winning.... In this
+hard task Mr. <span class="smcap">Nicols</span> has succeeded admirably, without resorting
+to that base subterfuge—the attempt to clothe instruction in the
+guise of fiction.... This is true education, for it teaches children
+first to observe and then to reason.... Though the style of this
+delightful book is simple and childlike, it is as far as possible
+removed from being childish.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Pall Mall Gazette.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The language is plain, the descriptions are lucid, the illustrations
+apt, and the broad facts of the science are very correctly stated.
+The work, too, is free from all attempts at fine writing.... We
+wish the book success as at any rate an attempt to lay before the
+young fact instead of fiction.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Quarterly Journal</span> of <span class="smcap">Science</span>.<br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The book is a successful attempt to explain the simplest facts
+of geology, and of the succession of life on the earth.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Westminster Review.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The idea is a happy one, and will recommend itself to children;
+and we are bound to say that Mr. <span class="smcap">Nicols</span> has carried out his idea
+remarkably well, and produced a work which will do much to spread
+sound notions upon the gradual development of our earth and its
+inhabitants to the condition in which we now see them.... We
+can safely recommend Mr. <span class="smcap">Nicols’</span> little book as one that will
+have a most beneficial effect in opening the minds of its young
+readers.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Popular Science Review.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘This is a good little book, cleverly written by an able geologist,
+and well adapted for children. We can recommend the volume as
+a present to any intelligent boy or girl.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Lancet.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘This book appears to be, in style, language, and scope, eminently
+adapted for its purpose, which is to awaken among the little folks
+an interest “in the history of life upon the earth,” and “give them
+the taste for more extended study in after years.”’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Illustrated London News.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘“Though these pages are designed for young persons,” says the
+Author, “other readers, perhaps, who are not familiar with the
+subject, may find some interest in them, if they are not deterred by
+the necessarily simple style,”—which, we venture to say, they most
+assuredly will not be.... To many grown persons, therefore, as well
+as their descendants, will this book be a great boon, which, if they
+are at all liberal-minded, they will advocate as well as appreciate....
+Like the Science Primers of Professors Huxley, Roscoe, Balfour
+Stewart, &amp;c., if duly read and weighed, it will tend to unravel and
+sweep away a deal of baneful superstition.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Land</span> and <span class="smcap">Water</span>.<br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘That Mr. <span class="smcap">Nicols</span> has succeeded in the object he proposed to
+himself may be safely affirmed. He has done his work briefly and
+lucidly, and has produced a book capable of arresting the attention,
+not only of children, but of those from whom they receive their
+earlier lessons.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+The <span class="smcap">Country</span>.<br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘A perfect “Open Sesame” for young scientific students, and so
+cleverly composed as to make students of those who are not scientific:
+not merely the young, but older people too. Mr. <span class="smcap">Nicols</span> thoroughly
+understands his work.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Notes</span> and <span class="smcap">Queries</span>.<br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘Easily and attractively written for young people.... The treatment
+of so wide a subject, and the condensing it into a volume of
+150 pages is no light task. We can, however, congratulate Mr.
+<span class="smcap">Nicols</span> upon having accomplished it in so judicious, perhaps, better
+still, so suggestive a manner; and we have no doubt that his little
+book will become a well-worn favourite in the hands of all
+thoughtful and intelligent children who may be so fortunate as to
+possess it.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Engineer.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The manner in which the pieces of the puzzle—fossils—are
+found, put together, and interpreted, is related in language readily
+understood by children; the description of the vegetable, animal,
+and human parts being peculiarly interesting. The illustrations
+are the best of the kind with which we are acquainted.... We
+strongly recommend it.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Schoolmaster.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘It is the puzzle as to the history of life on the earth unravelled
+in a manner to interest and enlighten the minds, and to develop
+the observing and reflecting faculties of children.... The results of
+costly and laborious investigations in many different branches of
+science are concentrated in these free and easy lessons or colloquial
+lectures to young children.... Calculated to arouse an interest in
+all but the dullest and most indifferent juvenile minds.... Will be
+found invaluable to teachers and a great help in the rational cultivation
+of the intelligence of the rising generation.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">School Board Chronicle.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘The statement of these facts, though made with all the sobriety
+due to a scientific discourse, has all the interest of a story for the
+young; and the narrative, if we mistake not, will interest other
+readers than those for whom it is primarily written. A word of
+commendation must be given to the illustrations, which are exceedingly
+well drawn.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Educational Times.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘To place the “simple truths of science” in rivalry with fairy
+tales and merry picture-books is not so hopeless as at first sight
+may seem; and certainly the simple, attractive style in which the
+marvels of the physical world are here set out must not only interest,
+but charm every bright child of eager intellect. Simplicity is
+observed to the utmost, but it is the simplicity of truth, so that the
+child is not interested at the expense of having afterwards to unlearn
+what he has read or listened to.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Liverpool Weekly Albion.</span><br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘Mr. <span class="smcap">Arthur Nicols</span> has attempted a task which at first sight
+seems extremely difficult, but which he has successfully achieved....
+Children can scarcely help understanding and being interested
+in the wonderful story of the earth’s crust, and of past organic life
+upon it, which he unfolds. There is nothing childish about his
+style, yet he writes with perfect simplicity.... A better book to
+put into the hands of thoughtful children, or for use as a text-book
+by persons engaged in the private tuition of the young, it would
+be difficult to find.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+The <span class="smcap">Scotsman</span>.<br>
+</p>
+<br>
+
+<p>‘Facts are stranger than any fancies which emanate from the
+writers of even fairy tales, and when they can be brought home to
+youthful students by ocular demonstrations the facts are invariably
+preferred to the fancies.... The illustrations which adorn the book
+are well drawn, and sufficiently numerous for the purpose.... The
+Author is a genial and reliable guide to a solution of the puzzle of
+life.’</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">English Mechanic.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="r5">
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp">London, LONGMANS &amp; CO.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+<h2 class="bold fs150 wsp">Transcriber’s Notes</h2>
+
+<table class="autotable lh">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 29 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">For innumerable agest hese little creatures</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">For innumerable ages these little creatures</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 91 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Footnote 1: Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several specimens, mperfect</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Footnote 1: Wall-case No. 11 in Room III., several specimens, imperfect</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 131 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">lived as that these flin weapons and tools</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">lived as that these flint weapons and tools</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75564 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75564 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75564)