First Sentence

"Commonly, mankind and the sciences are inclined because they find the remains of supposedly extremely ancient, pre-historic signs of certain savage man and animal life, fossils, implements, utensils, etc., to regard such things as belonging to the age of earliest man and animal kind and to classify them, according to certain periods of time, computed and termed epochs or ages, such as Drift, Stone, Bone, Bronze, Iron, Carboniferous, Glacial, Pre-historic, Historic, etc."