GRYPHEA ISCUR\'A—Ol^E SPECIMEN 

 SHOWING OPERCULUM, FROM 

 THE LIAS. 



AMMONITES COMMUMS. FROM THE LIAS. 



FOSSILS AND THEIR STORY 



By F. MARTIN DUNCAN, F.R.P.S. 

 With Photographs by the Author 



FOSSILS are the pictures wherewith 

 Nature has illustrated her great 

 stone book, the pages of which 

 are the mountains and valleys, the cliffs 

 and seashore, the peat-bog and river 

 channel ; pages that are eloquent with 

 the romance of the past history of this 

 earth, and which are ready to yield some- 

 thing of their romance to every intelligent 

 observer. 



With the aid of these fossil remains, 

 it is possible to reconstruct many a page 

 of the history of the Earth's past, and 

 to learn what the plants, animals and 

 insects were like that lived during each 

 geological period, and also what climatic 

 conditions prevailed ; while perhaps the 

 most interesting and valuable of all, is 

 the fact that by careful studying and com- 

 paring these same fossils, we are able to 

 trace the origin, ancestry, and gradual 

 evolution of many of the forms of life 

 which inhabit the earth to-day. 



Fearsome, indeed, must have been 

 many of the creatures which lived during 

 some periods of the earth's past ; creatures 

 more weird in appearance than any that 



have been drawn by the facile pencil of 

 that inimitable caricaturist of geological 

 remains, Mr. Lawson Wood ; and we 

 may well be thankful that they have 

 ceased to exist. As we gaze upon the 

 gigantic fossil remains of these monsters 

 of the past, we cannot help wondering 

 if such ancient and practically universal 

 myths as the dragon story had not an 

 origin in literal fact, and are the dim 

 echoes handed down from the days of 

 Palaeolithic or pre-Palaeolithic Man. 



It always seems to me very strange 

 why so many people labour under the 

 absolutely mistaken idea that geology is 

 a " dr^'-as-dust " sort of hobby, and one 

 out of which little or no interest is to be 

 extracted. As a matter of fact, it is one 

 of the most absorbingly interesting hol)])ies 

 one could wish for. Think for a moment 

 what this term geology means — it is formed 

 from two Greek words, which literally 

 mean earth-science — and you will at once 

 realise what a wide field of interest it 

 covers. It is the science which will help 

 us to imderstand how every mountain 

 and valley, moorland, cliff and marsh, 



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