Produced by Tom Cosmas compiled from images made available by The Internet Archive. Transcriber Note Text emphasis is denoted by _Italics_ and =Bold=. Whole and fractional parts are displayed as 123-4/5. [Illustration: Cape Trinity on the Saguenay. A salient point of Laurentian Gneiss, on an old fiord of Pliocene erosion (p. 99). (_From a Photograph by Henderson._)] SOME SALIENT POINTS IN THE SCIENCE OF THE EARTH BY SIR J. WILLIAM DAWSON C.M.G., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. _WITH FORTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS_ [Illustration] NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1894 PREFACE. The present work contains much that is new, and much in correction and amplification of that which is old; and is intended as a closing deliverance on some of the more important questions of geology, on the part of a veteran worker, conversant in his younger days with those giants of the last generation, who, in the heroic age of geological science, piled up the mountains on which it is now the privilege of their successors to stand. J. W. D. _Montreal_ 1893. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page The Starting-point 3 CHAPTER II. World-making 9 CHAPTER III. The Imperfection of the Geological Record 39 CHAPTER IV. The History of the North Atlantic 57 CHAPTER V. The Dawn of Life 95 CHAPTER VI. What May Be Learned from Eozoon 135 CHAPTER VII. The Apparition and Succession of Animal Forms 169 CHAPTER VIII. The Genesis and Migrations of Plants 201 CHAPTER IX. The Growth of Coal 233 CHAPTER X. PAGE The Oldest Air-breathers 257 CHAPTER XI. Markings, Footprints, and Fucoids 311 CHAPTER XII. Pre-determination in Nature 329 CHAPTER XIII. The Great Ice Age 345 CHAPTER XIV. Causes of Climatal Change 363 CHAPTER XV. The Distribution of Animals and Plants As Related to Geographical and Geological Changes 401 CHAPTER XVI. Alpine and Arctic Plants in Connection With Geological History 425 CHAPTER XVII. Early Man 459 CHAPTER XVIII. Man in Nature 481