288 KEY TO TERRESTRIAL HISTORY 



possibly during some world-wide revolution, possibly at 

 last vanquished by some superior living foe. They go 

 down into the abyss, and not one survives to enjoy the 

 new world of the Cainozoic sera. 



Looking back on the history of the study of strata, we 

 find at the beginning of the last century the stimulus of 

 William Smith's discovery producing its first effects, and 

 this branch of our science entered upon its golden age. 

 The middle of the century was a period of difficulty and 

 doubt ; first principles were subjected to an anxious and 

 almost desponding scrutiny. At the close we enter the 

 dawn of renewed hope, and the prospect of a universal 

 history of the earth begins to open before us. Already as 

 a preliminary a new branch of our science the geography 

 of past features of our planet is in process of creation ; 

 the first contribution we owe to Neumayr, who has given 

 ais a chart of land and sea as he conceived it to exist in 

 Jurassic times : this has been followed by many others, 

 constructed by Koken, De Lapparent, and Freeh, to 

 represent the geography of almost all the other periods. 

 Possibly these charts are as far removed from the truth 

 as were the mappce mundi of the sixteenth century ; it is 

 the task of the future to improve them, already taken in 

 hand by explorers as ardent as were the famous navigators 

 who sailed on unknown seas in the time of Elizabeth. 

 While the geologist, as cartographer, is thus restoring the 

 outlines of vanished continents and oceans, as palaeonto- 

 logist .he is acquainting us with the nature of their 

 inhabitants ; some regions he leaves desolate, desert lands 

 and dead seas, others he clothes with meadows and forests, 

 and peoples with strange and grotesque animal forms, 

 which are becoming as familiar as the giants and dragons 

 of faery tale. 



Thus we are entering into the treasure-house of past 

 events ; as we wander through its chambers the petrified 



