THE HAZARDS OF THE PAST 



bodies is an indubitable fact, and if collisions do 

 happen to any, allow time enough and they must 

 happen to all. That there are geologic dangers 

 through the shifting and crumpling of the earth's 

 crust, every geologist knows, though probably none 

 that could wipe out the whole race of man. The 

 biologic dangers of the past we have outlived — 

 the dangers that must have beset a single line of 

 descent amid the carnival of power and the ferocity 

 of the monster reptiles of Mesozoic times, and the 

 wholesale extinction of species that occurred in 

 different geologic periods. 



Nothing but a cosmic catastrophe, involving the 

 fate of the whole earth, could now exterminate the 

 human race. It is highly improbable that this will 

 ever happen. The race of man will go out from a 

 slow, insensible failure, through the aging of the 

 planet, of the conditions of life that brought man 

 here. The evolutionary process upon a cooling 

 world must, after the elapse of a vast period of time, 

 lose its impetus and cease. 



