deeper rocks were records that dimly lit a vast abyss of time of
which they never dreamed. It is the supreme achievement of modern
science to have discovered and deciphered these records. The
picture of the past which they afford is, on the whole, an
outline sketch. Here and there the details, the colour, the light
and shade, may be added; but the greater part of the canvas is
left to the more skilful hand of a future generation, and even
the broad lines are at times uncertain. Yet each age would know
how far its scientific men have advanced in constructing that
picture of the growth of the heavens and the earth, and the aim
of the present volume is to give, in clear and plain language, as
full an account of the story as the present condition of our
knowledge and the limits of the volume will allow. The author has
been for many years interested in the evolution of things, or the
way in which suns and atoms, fishes and flowers, hills and
elephants, even man and his institutions, came to be what they
are. Lecturing and writing on one or other phase of the subject
have, moreover, taught him a language which the inexpert seem to
understand, although he is not content merely to give a
superficial description of the past inhabitants of the earth.

The particular features which, it is hoped, may give the book a
distinctive place in the large literature of evolution are,
first, that it includes the many evolutionary discoveries of the
last few years, gathers its material from the score of sciences
which confine themselves to separate aspects of the universe, and
blends all these facts and discoveries in a more or less
continuous chronicle of the life of the heavens and the earth.
Then the author has endeavoured to show, not merely how, but why,
scene succeeds scene in the chronicle of the earth, and life