We shall find it useful
sometimes at least in confirming our conclusions as to the
ancestry of a particular group.
We have, therefore, two important clues to the missing chapters
in the story of evolution. Just as the scheme of the evolution of
worlds is written broadly across the face of the heavens to-day,
so the scheme of the evolution of life is written on the face of
living nature; and it is written again, in blurred and broken
characters, in the embryonic development of each individual. With
these aids we set out to restore the lost beginning of the epic
of organic evolution.
CHAPTER VI. THE INFANCY OF THE EARTH
The long Archaean period, into which half the story of the earth
is so unsatisfactorily packed, came to a close with a
considerable uplift of the land. We have seen that the earth at
times reaches critical stages owing to the transfer of millions
of tons of matter from the land to the depths of the ocean, and
the need to readjust the pressure on the crust. Apparently this
stage is reached at the end of the Archaean, and a great rise of
the land --probably protracted during hundreds of thousands of
years--takes place.
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