Release date is 2026-01-26

John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

"The story of the universe. Volume 2 (of 4)" by Esther Singleton is a popular scientific anthology written in the early 20th century. It surveys the Earth’s land, sea, and air through accessible essays by noted scientists and science writers. Readers can expect clear explanations of planetary formation, the classes of rocks, geologic time, ancient life, and the working forces that shape mountains, oceans, and the atmosphere.

The opening of the volume moves from big-picture origins to the building blocks of Earth science: it presents Laplace’s nebular hypothesis and the cooling, crust-forming early Earth, the condensation of oceans, and the idea of a hot interior. It then classifies rocks (aqueous, volcanic, plutonic, metamorphic), explains stratification, fossils, and formations with vivid modern analogies, and outlines geological chronology to show the vast sweep of time and the broad progression of plant life. Next come scene-setting case studies: a “Silurian beach” with ripple marks and trace fossils, a catalog of its ancient marine life, and early fishes; followed by the Carboniferous world’s luxuriant, uniform-climate forests and a concise, process-based account of how coal formed. A broad paleontological sketch traces four major body plans and the succession from fish-dominated seas to reptile-dominated Oolitic times, the arrival of birds, and the rise of mammals, illustrated with striking extinct forms. The section closes by describing evidence for powerful, sudden water-driven denudations and glacial deposits (“diluvium”) linked to crustal upheavals, breaking off mid-discussion. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: New York: P.F. Collier and Son, 1905