Animals Before Man 



tracks were made, a long, narrow bay or estu- 

 ary ran northward from Long Island Sound, 

 and the rocks tell that at times the shores were 

 left dry to bake in the sun, and again that 

 they were overflowed by water, sweeping down 

 quantities of mud and sand, filling up all im- 

 pressions, and making casts of the tracks of 

 those creatures that had wandered by the 

 waterside. 



How fossils are laboriously gathered and 

 patiently prepared are stories by themselves, 

 but stories that in the present instance may be 

 passed by ; what does concern us is the method 

 by which these characters of stone are made to 

 tell the story of the past life of our continent. 

 It is not so many years ago that fossils were 

 looked upon as mere " sports of nature," inter- 

 esting from their resemblances in some cases to 

 shells or bones, but having no meaning what- 

 ever. A little later their real nature was ac- 

 knowledged, but they were regarded as " medals 

 of creation," marking various stages in the his- 

 tory of the world, but of importance mainly 

 for the identification of strata and determining 



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