Animal life began first, like the plants, in the bosom
of the ocean. From the slimy depths of the water life
crawled hideous to the land. Great reptiles dragged their
sluggish length through the tangled vegetation of the
jungle of giant ferns.
Through countless thousands of years, perhaps, this
gradual process went on. Nature, shifting its huge scenery,
depressed the ocean beds and piled up the dry land of
the continents. In place of the vast 'Continental Sea,'
which once filled the interior of North America, there
arose the great plateau or elevated plain that now runs
from the Mackenzie basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead
of the rushing waters of the inland sea, these waters
have narrowed into great rivers--the Mackenzie, the
Saskatchewan, the Mississippi--that swept the face of
the plateau and wore down the surface of the rock and
mountain slopes to spread their powdered fragments on
the broad level soil of the prairies of the west. With
each stage in the evolution of the land the forms of life
appear to have reached a higher development. In place of
the seaweed and the giant ferns of the dawn of time there
arose the maples, the beeches, and other waving trees
that we now see in the Canadian woods.
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