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The Prehistoric World; or, Vanished races by Emory Adams Allen
page 44 of 805 (05%)
this early time. The earliest forms of flowerless plants, such
as sea-weeds, and in dry places possibly lichens covering the
rocks, were the highest forms of vegetable life. Animal life, if
present, for the fact is denied by some, occurs in the very
lowest form, merely structureless bodies, with no especial
organs of sense, or nutrition: and their motion consisting
simply in protruding and withdrawing hair-like processes.<4>
Such was the beginning of life. This vast period of time, which
includes the beginning, is known among geologists as
Archean time.

From the close of this age, the history of life properly
commences. It might be well to explain the means which the
geologist uses to interpret the history of the globe. It is now
understood that the forces of nature have always produced the
same results as they do now. From the very earliest time to the
present, rocks have been forming. There, where conditions were
favorable, great beds of limestone, formed from shells and
corals, ground up by the action of the sea<5>--in other places,
massive beds of sandstone or of sand, afterward consolidated
into sandstone--were depositing. On the land surface, in places,
great beds of vegetable debris were being converted into
coal. Now we can easily see how the remains of organic bodies,
growing at the time of the formation of these beds, should be
preserved in a fossil form. Limestone rocks are thickly studded
in places with all sorts of marine formations. Coal fields
reveal wonders of early vegetative growth. From sandstone rocks,
and shaly beds, we learn strange stories of animal life at the
time they were forming. From a careful study of these remains
together with the formation in which they occur, not only in one
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