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 

 with some attempt to forecast their fate in millions of 

 years to come. 



In so brief an account of so long a story only slight 

 reference can be made to the controversies that divide 

 modern students of evolution in regard to the agencies 

 at work. The aim is chiefly to present a panoramic 

 view of the development of the world — especially the 

 world that lies close about us — by a conscientious use 

 of the results of many sciences, and aided by a personal 

 acquaintance during many years with both telescope 

 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 Nan." 



J.M. 



