54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Miltonic account the order in which animals should have made their 

 appearance in the stratified rock would be this : Fishes, including the 

 great whales, and birds ; after that, all varieties of terrestrial animals. 

 Nothing could be further from the facts as we find them. As a mat- 

 ter of fact we know of not the slightest evidence of the existence of 

 birds before the Jurassic and perhaps the Triassic formations. 



If there were any parallel between the Miltonic account and the 

 circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence of the 

 existence of birds in the Devonian, the Silurian, and the Carbonifer- 

 ous rocks. I need hardly tell you that this is not the case, and that 

 not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far later period 

 which I have mentioned. 



And again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes and the great 

 whales, and the like, made their appearance on the fifth day, then we 

 ought to find the remains of these things in the older rocks in those 

 which preceded the Carboniferous epoch. Fishes, it is true, we find, 

 and numerous ones ; but the great whales are absent, and the fishes 

 are not such as now live. Not one solitary species of fish now in ex- 

 istence is to be found there, and hence you are introduced again to 

 the dilemma that either the creatures which were created then, which 

 came into existence the sixth day, were not those which are found at 

 present, are not the direct and immediate predecessors of those which 

 now exist ; in which case you must either have had a fresh creation 

 of which nothing is said, or a process of evolution ; or else the whole 

 story must be given up, as not only devoid of any circumstantial evi- 

 dence, but contrary to that evidence. 



I placed before you in a few words, some little time ago, a state- 

 ment of the sum and substance of Milton's hypothesis. Let me try 

 now to put before you as briefly the effect of the circumstantial evi- 

 dence as to the past history of the earth which is written without the 

 possibility of mistake, with no chance of error, in the stratified rocks. 

 What we find is, that that great series of formations represents a 

 period of time of which our human chronologies hardly afford us a 

 unit of measure. I will not pretend to say how we ought to measure 

 this time, in millions or in billions of years. Happily for my pur- 

 pose, that is wholly unessential. But that the time was enormous, 

 there is no sort of question. 



It results from the simplest methods of interpretation, that all that 

 is now dry land has once been at the bottom of the waters. Leaving 

 out of view certain patches of metamorphosed rocks, certain- volcanic 

 products, it is perfectly certain that at a comparatively recent period 

 of the world's history the Cretaceous epoch none of the great phys- 

 ical features which at present mark the surface of the globe existed. 

 It is certain that the Rocky Mountains were not. It is certain that 

 the Himalaya Mountains were not. It is certain that the Alps and 

 the Pyrenees had no existence. The evidence is of the plainest pos- 



