Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ THE PUZZLE OF LIFE. LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET [Illustration: _Frontispiece_ _The Mammoth._] THE PUZZLE OF LIFE; AND HOW IT HAS BEEN PUT TOGETHER. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE EARTH, WITH ITS VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES, INCLUDING AN ACCOUNT OF _PRE-HISTORIC MAN, his WEAPONS, TOOLS and WORKS_. BY ARTHUR NICOLS, F.R.G.S. _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS by FREDERICK WADDY._ SECOND EDITION. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1877. _All rights reserved._ TO MY YOUNG FRIENDS BEATRIX, GUY, SYLVIA, MAY, AND GERALD. THE CHILDREN OF GEORGE DU MAURIER. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The favourable reception accorded to the first edition has induced me to give the present a more definite educational character. Foot-notes are appended, referring to the position in the British Museum of all the principal antiquities, fossils, and implements mentioned in the text; so that the specimens can easily be found by any young student who wishes, with the book in his hand, to make himself familiar with these records of past time. This will probably facilitate the search for and recognition of specimens by the reader. The additions to the text consist chiefly of a more extended account of the deposition of chalk and other deep-sea formations, founded on the results of the “Challenger” and “Tuscarora” expeditions, and a sketch of the earthworks of the Ohio mound-builders and the stone monuments of Easter Island. Examples of pre-historic art and lake-dwellings have been added to the illustrations. A. N. HAMPSTEAD: _March 1877_. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Having found that children could be interested in the history of life upon the Earth, and that it appealed forcibly to their understanding, I considered that a little book upon the subject might give them the taste for more extended study in after years. The difficulty of treating the, to them, novel conclusions of geology, often founded on abstract reasoning, in language simple in form yet stating clearly the great principles upon which this reasoning rests, will probably be apparent on every page. Breadth, rather than minuteness, has been aimed at, in the belief that a general view, not overcrowded with details, is likely to be the most impressive. Thus, in the geological part the leading features of the succession of strata have been preserved, but no details of systematic classification entered into. Similarly, Primeval Man is considered mainly with reference to gradual progress from a rude to a more civilized condition. To have been more explicit, where there is still much difference of opinion, would have obscured the main facts of the evidence for man’s great antiquity.