Time and terrestrial change; floods, fossils and heresies - "no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end"; evolution; the relative geological time-scale and modern concepts of stratigraphy; the numerical dating of the earth; origin and early evolution of the earth; mountain building and drifting continents; cryptozoic history - an introduction to the origin of continental crust; early life and its patterns; earliest Paleozoic history - the Sauk sequence/an introduction to cratons and epeiric seas; the later Ordovician - further studies of plate tectonics of orogenic belts; the middle Paleozoic - time of reefs, salts and forests; late Paleozoic history - a tectonic climax and retreat of the sea; the Mesozoic era - age of reptiles and supercontinent break-up; Cenozoic history - threshold of the present; Pleistocene glaciation and the advent of humans; the best of all possible worlds? Appendices: The classification and relationships of life; English equivalents of metric measures.