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Dunes at Ipswich Light, Massachusetts. Note the effect of bushes in arresting the movement of the wind-blown sand.Dunes at Ipswich Light, Massachusetts.Note the effect of bushes in arresting the movement of the wind-blown sand.

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OUTLINES OF THE
EARTH'S HISTORY
A POPULAR STUDY IN PHYSIOGRAPHY
BY
NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER
PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
DEAN OF LAWRENCE SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL
ILLUSTRATED
WITH INDEX
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898, 1910

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PREFACE.

The object of this book is to provide the beginner in the study of theearth's history with a general account of those actions which can bereadily understood and which will afford him clear understandings asto the nature of the processes which have made this and othercelestial spheres. It has been the writer's purpose to select thoseseries of facts which serve to show the continuous operations ofenergy, so that the reader might be helped to a truer conception ofthe nature of this sphere than he can obtain from ordinary text-books.

In the usual method of presenting the elements of the earth's historythe facts are set forth in a manner which leads the student toconceive that history as in a way completed. The natural prepossessionto the effect that the visible universe represents something done,rather than something endlessly doing, is thus re-enforced, with theresult that one may fail to gain the largest and most educativeimpression which physical science can afford him in the sense of theswift and unending procession of events.

It is well known to all who are acquainted with the history of geologythat the static conception of the earth—the idea that its existingcondition is the finished product of forces no longer in action—ledto prejudices which have long retarded, and indeed still retard, theprogress of that science. This fact indicates that at the outset of astudent's work in this field he should be guarded[Pg iv] against suchmisconceptions. The only way to attain the end is by bringing to theunderstanding of the beginner a clear idea of successions of eventswhich are caused by the forces operating in and on this sphere. Of allthe chapters of this great story, that which relates to the history ofthe work done by the heat of the sun is the most interesting andawakening. Therefore an effort has been made to present the greatsuccessive steps by which the solar energy acts in the processes ofthe air and the waters.

The interest of the beginner in geology is sure to be aroused when hecomes to see how very far the history of the earth has influenced thefate of men. Therefore the aim has been, where possible, to show theways in which geological processes and results are related toourselves; how, in a word, this earth has been the well-appointednursery of our kind.

All those who are engaged in teaching elementary science learn theneed of limiting the story they have to tell to those truths which canbe easily understood by beginners. It is s

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