INTKODUCTXOF. 



It is well known to Geologists that life did not first burst 

 into existence in the forms of plants and animals we now see 

 around us. On the contrary, there were many successive steps 

 in the great work of creation : the organisms of one period, after 

 subserving the ends for which they were called into existence, 

 passing gradually away, to give place to new types, which in 

 their turn became extinct. Although there were partial ex- 

 ceptions to the general rule, each successive fauna and flora 

 (using these terms in their widest signification) presented, on 

 the whole, an improvement upon the preceding; or, in other 

 words, the first created forms were amongst the most simple in 

 structure, and hence the lowest in the scale of life ; while those 

 that came after, as time passed on, were more and more highly 

 organized, until at last Man, the highest type of all, appeared to 

 exercise dominion over all existing beings. 



During these long ages and cycles of the past, the earth 

 itself was undergoing many mutations, both from the action of 

 internal igneous forces, and external agencies. Islands and 

 continents were rising above or sinking beneath the ocean 

 level; mountain chains were being upheaved and vast areas were 

 alternately submerged, and again raised above the level of the 

 sea, to be occupied by immense marshes, supporting dense 

 growths of strange trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, which, 

 by their death and accumulation through long* periods of time, 

 formed the material of our coal beds. During all this time, 

 solid rocks, where exposed, were, as at present, slowly crumbling 

 under the disintegrating influences of rains, frosts and other 

 atmospheric agencies, to be swept by streams into seas, estuaries 

 and lakes, to form beds of sand, clay or marl, or to be consolidated 



