The Present volume, which makes extensive use of recent investigations, is designed to help the student to use fossils to the best advantage in his geological work. Some palaeontological knowledge is necessarily assumed, but the descriptive terms used in the book are explained in chapter II., while such general considerations as mode of occurrence, habitat, geographical distribution and migration are discussed in succeeding chapters. The second part of the volume contains an account chapters. The second part of the volume contains an account of the faunas of the geological systems as represented in Pritam, and some of the problems which need further investigation are indicated therein. It is hoped that the book, with its numerous illustrations of fossils which are of importance in the field, will prove a serviceable manual to mining and boring engineers, and to field-geologists in general. With regard to illustrations, while photographs have the advantage of accuracy, many fossils are so preserved that drawings or diagrams are necessary to give a clear representation of the essential characters. This volume is, therefore, illustrated by a number of photographs taken from specimens and from drawings in monographs, and further by a series of drawings made, under the author’s supervision, by Miss Kathleen Ball of the Liverpool School of art. As a general rule, the figures are arranged so that the older forms appear in the lower part of the page. Some inequality in the illustration of various fossil-groups in necessitated by differences in the use of generic and specific names. For example, such a large genus as Monograptus, which ranges practically throughout a whole system, naturally demands the illustration of a number of species. But in the case of ammonities, of which the genera are now so restricted that almost every one suffices to indicate a small stratal subdivision, a single species is used to illustrate the generic characters.
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