agree with Modern Geology ? 67 



ture ; and if this interpretation of that word be admitted, then 

 deshe might signify here plants rather fitted for lying down on, 

 as the mosses and ferns, than for pasture^ which would make 

 out a consistent image expressed in this clause or sentence, in 

 opposition to the one derived from the abundance of pasture, 

 which is evidently already sufficiently completed in the terras,^ 

 " The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want/'' This passage, 

 then, when rightly understood, rather serves to confirm the 

 meaning which we have suggested for deshe. Another passage 

 is Job vi. 5, " Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass 

 (deshe), or loweth the ox over his fodder ?" but no stress can be 

 laid upon this, when we consider that both the ass and the 

 horse eat, of choice, various species of ferns and equiseta, a fact 

 which it is not unreasonable to suppose might be known to the 

 author of a book which contains so much accurate and interest- 

 ing natural history as this of Job. The plants, whatever they 

 might be, which formed a supply for the wild ass, are at least 

 obviously set in contradistinction to those which formed the fod- 

 der of the ox. The third passage is Jeremiah 1. 11, " because ye 

 are grown fat as the heifer at grass (deshe)." But there is in a 

 great number of manuscripts a various reading for deshe here, 

 by which the meaning becomes, " ye are grown fat, like a hei- 

 fer thrashing, or treading, out the corn ;*" and several circum- 

 stances shew the latter reading to be the more probably correct 

 one. 



It remains, then, very highly probable, upon the whole, that 

 ' deshe^ in the 11th and 12th verses, is intended to express the 

 cryptogamous vegetation. 



In our observations on the terms employed in the history of 

 the creation of the animals, we shall arrive at some important 

 conclusions that are more absolutely certain. 



The first thing that we would observe in regard to this, is, 

 that there are two distinct words, of very different origin, which 

 the Enghsh translators have rendered, promiscuously, creeping 

 creatures or things^ and also moving creatures, following, no 

 doubt, the authority of the Septuagint, which has given l^'xtrec 

 for both ; thus occasioning a great confusion instead of a clear 

 and perspicuous order of creations exhibited in the Hebrew 



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