xxii THE EARTH BEFORE HISTORY 



It is an immense subject demanding a richness and an 

 exceptional variety of knowledge, together with a rare power of 

 synthesis such as perhaps only the author of this volume possesses. 

 The man who in 1881 wrote " Les Colonies animates et la 

 formation des organismes " , who occupied the professorial Chair 

 of Lamarck, and always "followed with the deepest interest the 

 attempts of the transformist doctrine to provide an explanation 

 of the living world ", that man, at the summit of his great career 

 was well qualified to establish, in this vigorous epitome, a biological 

 bond of union between the physical sciences and history. 



We need not be surprised that this volume does not entirely 

 conform to the type we have outlined, that its Bibliography is so 

 restricted, and finally that the concluding chapter does not indicate 

 the gaps in our knowledge. The Bibliography and the list of 

 the problems to be solved would be infinite were they not strictly 

 limited in the case of a subject covering, as it does, millions of 

 years. 



In a general way, in the volumes of this first Series, the 

 subjects, on account of their extent and complexity , do not lend 

 themselves to quite the same treatment as that of the more properly 

 historical volumes which follow. 



Henri Berr. 



