A Short History of the World

rocks. We find preserved in shale and slate, limestone, and sandstone, bones, shells, fibres, stems, fruits, footmarks, scratchings and the like, side by side with the ripple marks of the

ted and mixed together like the leaves of a library that has been repeatedly looted and burnt, and it is only as a result of many devoted lifetimes of work

hat geologists consider that they represent a period of at least half of the 1,600,000,000 which they assign to the whole geological record. Let me repeat this profoundly significant fact. Half the great interva

IN THE CAM

Lampshells (Obolella); 6, Orthoceras; 7, Trilobite (Paradoxides) - see fossil on page 1

es of comparatively simple and lowly things: the shells of small shellfish, the stems and flowerlike heads of zoophytes, seaweeds and the tracks and remains of sea worms and crustacea. Very early appear certain creatures rather like plant-

BITE (SLIGHT

hn J. War

ll the plants and creatures which have left us their traces from this period of the earth's history are shallow-water and intertidal beings. If we wished to parallel the flora and fauna of the Lower Pal?ozoic rocks on the earth to-day, we should do it best, except in the matter of size, by taking a

FOSSILS OF VARIOUS

ancient genus of shel

History Mu

mark for future geologists to discover. In the world's past, millions of millions of species of such creatures may have lived and multiplied and flourished and passed away without a trace remaining. The waters of the warm and shallow lakes and seas of the so-called Azoic period may have teemed with an infinite variety of lowly, jelly-like, shell-less and boneless creatures, and a multitude of green scummy plants may have spread over the sunlit intertidal rocks and beaches. The Record of the Rocks is no more a complete record of life i

NTS OF A LABYRINTH

History Mu