CHAPTER VI 

 LIFE IN THE PAST 



ANYONE who earnestly studies plants and animals 

 as they exist in the world to-day cannot help wonder- 

 ing- how the earth began and where it got its life. 

 This is the true end and aim of geological study. The 

 history of man seems to run back into a far distant 

 and gloomy past. Except for the poetical account in 

 Genesis and the traditions of various peoples through- 

 out the world, real history fades away into an earlier 

 time of which there are no written records. When 

 the delvers in the Mesopotamian plain talk to us of 

 kingdoms running back through seven or eight or 

 nine thousand years, we seem to be getting back to 

 the beginnings of things. But seven or eight or nine 

 thousand years are as nothing in comparison with the 

 age of the earth, which runs back into a past so lim- 

 itless that no man can safely assign any set figure to 

 it. In a recent paper, Dr. Walcott, f the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, says that the antiquity of the earth 

 must be measured not in millions, for they are too 

 short, nor hundreds of millions, for this carries us too 

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