HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND 

 PALEONTOLOGY. 



-INTRODUCTION. 



FIRST PERIOD GEOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN THE AGES 

 OF ANTIQUITY. 



IN all ages there have been men who have given serious 

 thought to the historical aspect of our terrestrial home, to its 

 origin and its development; but any clear conception of the 

 beginning of the Earth based, that is, upon scientific facts 

 was as remote from the most cultured nations of antiquity as 

 it is at the present day from the barbarous races of mankind. 

 The polymorphous myths of the Creation represent the varying 

 ideas which were formed regarding natural phenomena; the 

 limit of the spiritual field of vision determined the wider or more 

 circumscribed flights of imagination. The wide chasm between 

 the childish Saga of Creation handed down by the Bushmen, 

 Australians, Eskimos and Negroes, and the grand poetic 

 conceptions of the Aryan-Germanic races of Europe, conveys 

 to us the immense difference at that time in the condition of 

 culture and intellectual capacity of these peoples. 



Tradition has preserved to us the cosmogenetic and geo- 

 genetic views of the civilised races of the Mediterranean 

 countries and of Asia, and these arouse our admiration by 

 their poetry and philosophic depth. But there was no trace 

 either of exact observation of natural phenomena, or of logical 

 deduction from such observations. 



Amongst the ancient stories of the Creation the Babylonian 

 and Jewish accounts are pre-eminent for their intuitive skill 

 and for the excellence and conciseness of their language. The 



