Chapter I: Preface

The present work contains much that is new, and much in correction and amplification of that which is old; and is intended as a closing deliverance on some of the more important questions of geology, on the part of a veteran worker, conversant in his younger days with those giants of the last generation, who, in the heroic age of geological science, piled up the mountains on which it is now the privilege of their successors to stand.

J. W. D.

_Montreal_ 1893.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. Page
The Starting-point 3

CHAPTER II.
World-making 9

CHAPTER III.
The Imperfection of the Geological Record 39

CHAPTER IV.
The History of the North Atlantic 57

CHAPTER V.
The Dawn of Life 95

CHAPTER VI.
What May Be Learned from Eozoon 135

CHAPTER VII.
The Apparition and Succession of Animal Forms 169

CHAPTER VIII.
The Genesis and Migrations of Plants 201

CHAPTER IX.
The Growth of Coal 233

CHAPTER X. PAGE
The Oldest Air-breathers 257

CHAPTER XI.
Markings, Footprints, and Fucoids 311

CHAPTER XII.
Pre-determination in Nature 329

CHAPTER XIII.
The Great Ice Age 345

CHAPTER XIV.
Causes of Climatal Change 363

CHAPTER XV.
The Distribution of Animals and Plants As Related
to Geographical and Geological Changes 401

CHAPTER XVI.
Alpine and Arctic Plants in Connection With
Geological History 425

CHAPTER XVII.
Early Man 459