"I must go down to the sea again--to the lonely sea and the sky." This famous poem by John Masefield, former Poet Laureate of England, was one I had to memorize in school many, many years ago. It is a beautiful and moving poem, but I could never identify with it myself.

The ten strata systems that geologists use (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary) compose the "standard geologic column" and are claimed by many to contain the major proof of evolutionary theory. Several erroneous notions have been attached to the geologic column.