FOSTER 



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FOSTER 



WHY FOSSILS ARE FOUND IN THE EARTH 



In the course of ages the hills wear away by erosion (which see) and their deposits fall to the 

 bottoms of streams and lakes, gradually filling them up, or lessening their depths. Animals and plants 

 die and are covered, and possibly in hundreds of thousands or millions of years evidences of them are 

 discovered by excavation. The above illustration suggests but one of the means by which fossils are 

 formed. 



of these forms are found are believed to be 

 older than those in which fossils of more 

 complex forms occur. These studies lead us 

 to believe that plants came into existence be- 

 fore animals, and that animals with a simple 

 structure, like the shellfish and starfish, came 

 before those of a more complex structure. 

 The study of fossils tells us that there Were 

 no animals with backbones (vertebrates) be- 

 fore the Silurian Period, and that during the 

 Devonian Period fishes reached their highest 

 development. These were followed by rep- 

 tiles, which in turn were followed by birds, 

 and these by mammals, which were the fore- 

 runners of the animals of the present time. 

 The fossils of animals are much easier to study 

 than those of plants, because they are better 

 preserved. The study of fossils forms the 

 study of paleontology. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes : 

 Devonian Period Paleontology 



Geology Silurian Period 



FOSTER, JOHN WATSON (1836-1917), Amer- 

 ican diplomat of high rank, and a statesman 

 and author, was born in Indiana. He was grad- 

 uated at Indiana State University in 1855, 

 admitted to the bar in 1857, and served in the 



Union army during the War of Secession. 

 From 1873 to 1880 he was minister to Mexico, 

 then for two years minister to Russia, and in 

 1883 minister to Spain. In 1892 he succeeded 

 James G. Elaine as Secretary of State in the 

 Cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison. In 

 1893 he was agent in the Bering Sea arbitra- 

 tion at Paris; in 1898 member of the Anglo- 

 Canadian commission; in 1903 agent in the 

 Alaskan Boundary Tribunal at London; and 

 in 1907 was appointed delegate from China 

 to the Second Hague Conference. Probably 

 no other man in America has had a longer or 

 more honorable public career in diplomacy. 

 His son-in-law, Robert Lansing, became Sec- 

 retary of State under President Wilson. His 

 writings include A Century of American Di- 

 plomacy, Diplomatic Memoirs and The Prac- 

 tice of Diplomacy. 



FOSTER, SIR GEORGE EULAS (1847- ), a 

 Canadian statesman, Dominion Minister of 

 Trade and Commerce since 1911, the only 

 member of the Borden Ministry who had 

 previously held a Cabinet office, and the only 

 man who has served under all the Conservative 

 Premiers from Macdonald to Borden. His 

 early years gave little indication of his later 

 career. Born in New Brunswick, he attended 





