World Leaders Biography

I have not written to you for a long time. In my last two letters, we were looking back on ancient periods which we have been considering in our letters. I sent you some picture postcards of fossil fishes to give you some idea of what these fossils were like. In Mussoorie, when we met, I showed you pictures of other fossils. You may remember especially fossil reptiles. Reptiles are usually animals that crawl, like the snakes, lizards, crocodiles, and turtles, which we have today. The reptiles in old days belonged to the same family but were very different and were very big. You will remember the enormous brutes we saw in the South Kensington Museum. One of them was thirty to forty feet long. There was also a kind of frog bigger than .a man, and a tortoise almost as big. Enormous bats used to fly about, and one animal, the iguanodon, when it stood ~ up on its feet was as big as a small tree. You also saw fossils of old plants. There were beautiful fern markings in the rock, and ~ leav...

Are you not quite tired of my letters! I think you deserve a rest. Well, I shall not write to you anything new for some time. I want you just to think about what we have already done. We have rushed through millions of years in a few letters. Starting from the time when the earth was a bit of the sun, we saw how it separated and slowly cooled down. The moon then shot off. For long ages, there was no life. Then during millions and millions of years-have you any idea how long a time a million years is?-life grew very slowly. It is enormously difficult to be able to form an idea of millions of years. You are only ten years old and how grown-up and old you are! You are a jeune fille, n'est-ce pas? A young lady! A hundred years to you is a terribly long time. And then a thousand! And a million, which is a thousand times thousand! I am afraid we cannot get this in our little heads properly. We imagine that we are so important and little things annoy us and worry us. But what are these ...