GREAT AGE OF THEIR REMAINS 



found them, that they were the bones of 

 extinct animals and not of a great race of men. 



The indications given by buried remains of a 

 condition of the world which has passed away, 

 as, for instance, in the great buried town of 

 Pompeii, and some of the buried cities of Egypt, 

 excite, when they are dug up, the greatest 

 interest. From the records still preserved to 

 us, we try to find out what was the meaning 

 of the particular objects found, what were the 

 nature and the life of the men to whom they 

 belonged. The same kind of interest belongs 

 to the remains of extinct animals that we dig; 

 up, only that many of them are far older than^ 

 any remains of man ever found. We speak of 

 the remains of an ancient Egyptian city as being 

 some thousands of years old ; but the remains; 

 of many animals to which I shall have to refer 

 in these lectures have to be estimated, not by 

 thousands of years, but by millions of years ; 

 so many years in fact that no numbers with 

 which we are familiar will suffice to bring the 

 facts to the minds of my readers. 



Far down in the depths of the earth we find 

 the remains, in a well-preserved condition, of 

 the bones and teeth of such animals ; we are 



3 



