20 GEOLOGY AND HISTORY 



mals or ordinary quadrupeds were introduced, few at 

 first, small and of low rank in their class. Birds also 

 made their appearance, and toward the close of the 

 period fishes of modern types swarmed for the first 

 time in the sea. 



Lastly, we might see in the cenozoic, or tertiary 

 age, the newest of all, quadrupeds dominant on the 

 land and modern types of animal life in the sea. In 

 this period our continents finally assumed their present 

 forms. Toward its close and after many vicissitudes 

 of geography and climate, and several successive 

 dynasties of mammalian life, man and the land 

 animals now his contemporaries occupied the world, 

 and thus the cenozoic passes into the anthropic, or 

 modern period, called by some, but without good 

 reason, 'quaternary/ since it is in all respects a 

 proper continuation of the tertiary, or cenozoic. 1 



This last age of the world is so intimately con- 

 nected with man that it will be necessary to consider 

 it more in detail. More particularly we may en- 

 deavour to answer, if we can, the questions of order 

 and/time involved in man's late appearance. 

 ^V No geologist would expect to find any remains oi 

 man or his works in the periods represented by our 

 five earlier pictures, because in these periods the 

 physical conditions necessary to man and the animals 

 nearest to him in structure do not appear to have 



1 It will be seen that our six pictures are in some degree parallel 

 with the * days ' of creation. This is not an intentional reconciliation. 

 It merely expresses the fact of the case, whatever its significance. 



