both may have been created at very short intervals, and may have lived very soon after one another." Palæontology can, no doubt, offer no direct proof of the priority of existence of plants; for the earliest strata which have as yet been discovered do not contain fossil plants exclusively, but rather plants and animals; and, indeed, both sea plants and sea animals.1 But this does not contradict the supposition that the plants originated earlier than the animals which are petrified with them. Further, according to the opinion of eminent savants, it is very doubtful whether the so-called Azoic formations all belong to that period in which no organic life existed. It is probable that several of the so-called metamorphic rocks, that is, those rocks which are now crystalline, but which were formed from stratified rocks, contained organic remains, which were destroyed after the transition, and these may have been remains of animals.

"In the dark, greyish blue slate," says S. Bischof, "in which no fossils occur, and which occasionally becomes quite black, the colouring proceeds from a pervading alloy of coal. Now, if all coal proceeds from decomposed carbon, a vegetable world must evidently

1 Römer, Die ältesten Formen, etc., p. 9. According to Murchison, who has examined the oldest formations more closely than any one else, land plants are only found in the uppermost Silurian strata, but sea plants are found in the lowest (Siluria, p. 492). It is said that in some places strata containing sea plants and no animals have been found immediately above the Azoic formations. Cf. Vogt, Lehrbuch der Geol. i. 219; Natürl. Gesch. der Schöpfung. p. 29. Quenstedt, Sonst und Jetzt, p. 111; Epochen der Natur, pp. 292, 304, 350. Römer, Op. cit. p. 26. There is no question here of the Eozoon Canadense, see above, p. 287, note 1.

2 Bischof, Lehrbuch (1st ed.), i. pp. 44, 97 (2nd ed. i. 628). Vogt even says (Ausland, 1863, p. 840) that "all the so-called metamorphic slate and gneiss, and most of the granite, porphyry, and greenstone, is formed of rocks which were originally stratified and fossiliferous."

have preceded the formation of this slate, and so the organic kingdom must have come into existence even before the graywacke formation."1

We may therefore conclude that the Bible and natural science are in harmony with one another as regards the creation of plants before animals.2 Nor can there be any doubt that Genesis and palæontology agree on the whole as to the order in which the separate classes of animals appear; and that, even on the showing of those paleontologists who by no means intend to assert that such harmony exists. Giebel, for instance, says, "In the primary formations, zoophytes, trilobites, and fish preponderate; they all inhabit the water; they represent the most imperfect stage of development. In the secondary formations the water animals again appear in great numbers, but at the same time crabs and amphibious animals are seen in manifold shapes, giving to the period its special character. They denote the second stage of development, in which the transition from life in the water to life on land and in the air is seen. Lastly, in the tertiary strata, the highest classes of vertebrata and articulata, the insects, birds, and mammals, are found; and in these the development of the animal organism is completed. The preponderance of the determining classes in the series of formations in question is an acknowledged fact. There is an apparent contradiction in the appearance of insects and lizards in the coal measures and Permian system, i.e. in the primary period, and in that of mammals and birds in the Oolitic and Cretaceous ages. The wings of moths found at 1 Lehrbuch (1st ed.), i. 97. 2 Stutz, Schöpfungsgeschichte, p. 19.

Wettin no doubt represent insect life in the Carboniferous age, and the opossums found at Stonesfield land animals in the period of amphibious life. But these single instances are no more characteristic of the general animal creation of the period than are the apes at Gibraltar of the European fauna."1

Of course, all these remarks do not suffice to prove. that the third, fifth, and sixth days of Genesis on the one hand, and the Paleozoic, Mezozoic, and Cainozoic periods on the other, correspond as minutely as is required by the Concordistic theory. It seems that the account in Genesis must be understood to mean that the creation of plants was completed on the third day, and that of the water and air animals on the fifth, each time we are told "and God saw that it was good," and that the work of each of the three days was confined to the class of organic beings which is mentioned. From an exegetical point of view it is just as hazardous to depart from this interpretation, as from a scientific point of view it is hazardous, in characterizing the three great palaeontological periods, to lay stress solely on the plants in the first, the animals of the water and the air in the second, and the land animals in the third; and to put aside the other classes of organic beings as completely as is done in the above-mentioned explanations of the Concordistic theory.

Nor does this theory encounter less serious difficulties in dealing with the two days which I have hitherto left unnoticed.

Most of its supporters pass over the first day too

easily. If the third day is identified with the period in which the earth was covered by the primeval sea, one might be tempted to interpret the first day to mean the preceding period in which the earth was first a gaseous and then a fiery ball. But here we should come twice into direct conflict with the Mosaic record; first, according to ver. 2, the earth was at the beginning of the first day a ball covered by water, and secondly, the work of the first day is said to have been not only the creation of light, but also the separation of light from darkness which we call day and night. So that the first day must fall chronologically within the geological period, in which the earth had a solid crust which was covered with water,' and we should be forced to assume that in this period, in some manner or other, light had appeared, and an alternation of light and darkness, analogous to the alternation of day and night, but not caused by the rising and setting of the sun, had taken place. This supposition, no doubt, is not confirmed by geology, but it cannot be condemned as scientifically untenable, although the fact that the atmosphere was formed on the second day is not in its favour. According to the ordinary form of the Concordistic theory, the fourth day, on which the sun began to affect the earth, and the present relations between the earth and stars were established, must be inserted between the Carboniferous age, which corresponds to the second half of the third day, and the Triassic age, with which the fifth day begins, that is, it must correspond to the Permian age. Accordingly, to

H. Miller (Testimony, p. 175) identifies the first day with the Azoic, and the second with the Silurian and Devonian periods.

the remarks which have been previously quoted, Ebrard adds, "The species of plants which occur in the coal formation are the same in all parts of the earth; therefore during the Carboniferous age there existed no difference of climate on the earth, and the earth was warmed by its own heat, not by the sun; in the Triassic and Oolitic systems, on the other hand, signs of climatic differences appear. The organization therefore of the present sidereal relations of our earth, which Genesis mentions as being the work of the fourth day, is placed both by natural science and by the Bible between the Carboniferous period (the third day) and the Triassic, Oolitic, and Cretaceous systems (the fifth day)." Similarly Zöckler says,-for the fact that he reckons the Triassic period as part of the fourth day, and begins the fifth day with the Oolitic period, makes no important difference,-" The fourth day of creation evidently takes up no great portion of the whole process of geological development, because during its course no important terrestrial creations take place; but the lights of heaven are established in order to give light on the earth, and to divide terrestrial time, and this is an addition to the earlier acts of creation. It therefore corresponds admirably to those middle strata, following immediately on the strata of the Carboniferous age, which contain on the whole very few new and characteristic types of animals and plants, and which are-according to the description given of them by Edward Forbes and Hugh Miller-the product of a comparatively poorly productive epoch,' the result of a pause, as it were, in the primæval organic development. It is an epoch of transition.