Ill 



THE EVIDENCE OF FOSSIL REMAINS 



Few natural objects appeal to the interest and imagi- 

 nation of the student with more force than the frag- 

 ments of animals and plants released from the rocks 

 where they have been entombed for ages. Our lives 

 are so brief that it is impossible for us to comprehend 

 the full duration of the slow process which constructed 

 the burial shrouds of these creatures of long ago. We 

 try to picture the earth and its inhabitants as they were 

 when lizards were the highest forms of animals, and we 

 wonder how life was hved in the dense forests of the 

 coal age. Science can never learn all about the ancient 

 history of the earth and of the organisms of bygone 

 times ; yet it has been able to accomplish much through 

 its endeavors to reconstruct the past, for its method is 

 one by which sure results can always be obtained when- 

 ever there are definite facts with which it can work. 

 In our present study of evolution we reach the point 

 when we must examine the testimony of the rocks, and 

 the results and methods of that department of knowledge 

 called palaeontology, which is concerned with fossils and 

 their interpretation. 



The word "palaeontology" means literally the ''sci- 

 ence of living things of long ago." It deals directly 

 with the remains of animals and plants found as fossils, 



73 



