the
Archean's close till now.

And so geologists have devised an easier method of count, measured not
by units of time, but by what each phase of progress has accomplished.
This measure is set forth in the accompanying table, together with a
conjecture concerning the lapse of time in terms of years.

The most illuminating accomplishment of the table, however, is its
bird's-eye view of the procession of the evolution of life from the
first inference of its existence to its climax of to-day; and,
concurrent with this progress, its suggestion of the growth and
development of scenic America. It is, in effect, the table of contents
of a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustration are
engraved immortally in the rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets the
scholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but whose
dramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open to
all at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtful
seeing in the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big and
graphic that none may miss their meanings.

Man's colossal egotism is rudely shaken before the Procession of the
Ages. Aghast, he discovers that the billions of years which have wrought
this earth from star dust were not merely God's laborious preparation
of a habitation fit for so admirable an occupant; that man, on the
contrary, is nothing more or less than the present master tenant of
earth, the highest type of hundreds of millions of years of succeeding
tenants only because he is the latest in evolution.

PROGRESS OF CREATION

Chart of the Divisions of Geologic Time, and an Estimate in Years
based on the assumption that a hundred million years have elapsed
since the close of the Archean Period, together with a condensed
table of the Evolution of Life from its Inferred Beginnings in the
Archean to the Present Time. Read from the bottom up. Read the
footnote upon the opposite page concerning the Estimate of Time.

---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
ERA | PERIOD | EPOCH | LIFE DEVELOPMENT | ESTIMATED
| | | | TIME
---------+---------------+--------------+-----------------------+----------
| | Recent | THE AGE OF MAN |
CENOZOIC | _Quaternary_ | Pleistocene |Animals and plants of | 6