NOTE 



THE dimensions of this little work will sufficiently 

 prepare the reader to appreciate its scope. It gives no 

 more than the broad outlines of the evolution of the 

 earth and its inhabitants. From the great volume 

 which a score of sciences have co-operated in writing on 

 that absorbing subject it selects only the pages that are 

 most interesting and intelligible to the general reader. 

 These pages it joins into a continuous story, which 

 opens with the mighty cloud of matter that was stirred 

 into giving birth to our sun and its planets, and ends 



ERRATUM. 



Page 7 line 12 For 1788 read 1731. 



and microscope. But disputed points will be left open, 

 conjecture plainly stated as conjecture, and the latest 

 theories of importance indicated; so that the reader 

 may be at least slightly informed on the systems 

 Weismannism, Mendelism, etc. that now occur in all 

 he may read further on the subject. 



Thanks are due to Messrs. W. Keller & Co., Stuttgart, 

 for the right to reproduce the illustrations on pages 21, 

 41, 59, 79, 82 and 92, and also to The Open Court 

 Publishing Co., Chicago, for the illustration of the 

 " Neanderthal Man." 



J.M. 

 v 



