Geology is Earth history. The twenty essays in this book are concerned primarily with illustrating this history by reference to four aspects of stratigraphy and palaeontology: the biological interpretation of fossils, biostratigraphy and biogeography, descriptive palaeontology, and marine sedimentation and geomorphology. The dictum that 'palaeontology is the handmaid of stratigraphy' - without stratigraphy palaeontology would lack a time reference - is a truism. Each, of course, elucidates the other.