452 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



verses 25 and 2G ; presumably, it comprehends all kinds of terrestrial 

 animals, vertebrate and invertebrate, except such as may be comprised 

 under the head of the " air-population." 



Now what I want to make clear is this : that if the terras " water- 

 population," "air-population," and "land-population," are understood 

 in the senses here defined, natural science has nothing to say in favor 

 of the proposition that they succeeded one another in the order given 

 by Mr. Gladstone ; but that, on the contrary, all the evidence we pos- 

 sess goes to prove that they did not. Whence it will follow that, if 

 Mr. Gladstone has interpreted Genesis rightly (on Mhich point I am 

 most anxious to be understood to offer no opinion), that interpretation 

 is wholly irreconcilable with the conclusions at present accepted by the 

 interpreters of Nature — with everything that can be called "a demon- 

 strated conclusion and established fact " of natural science. And be 

 it observed that I am not here dealing with a question of speculation, 

 but with a question of fact. 



Either the geological record is sufficiently complete to afford us a 

 means of determining the order in which animals have made their ap- 

 pearance on the globe, or it is not. If it is, the determination of that 

 order is little more than a mere matter of observation ; if it is not, then 

 natural science neither affirms nor refutes the " fourfold order," but is 

 simply silent. 



The series of the fossiliferous deposits, which contain the remains 

 of the animals which have lived on the earth in past ages of its history, 

 and which can alone afford the evidence required by natural science of 

 the order of appearance of their different species, may be grouped in 

 the manner shown in the left-hand column of the following table, the 

 oldest being at the bottom : 



Fonnatlona. First known appearance of 



Quaternary. 

 Pliocene. 

 Miocene. 



Eocene. Vertebrate aiV-population (bats). 



Cretaceous. 



Jurassic Vertebrate aj>-population (birds and pterodactyls). 



Triassic. 



Upper Falajozoic. 



Sliddlc PalaDOzoic Vertebrate /a«c?-population (amphibia, rcptilia [?]). 



Lower PalKOzoic. 



Silurian Vertebrate wa/er-population (fishes). 



Invertebrate air- and /a?i</-population (flying insects and scorpions). 

 Cambrian Invertebrate ico^er-population (much earlier, if Ji'ozoon is animal). 



In the right-hand column I have noted the group of strata in which, 

 according to our present information, the land, air, and neater popula- 

 tions respectively appear for the first time ; and, in consequence of the 

 ambiguity about the meaning of "fowl," I have separately indicated 

 the first appearance of bats, birds, flying reptiles, and flying insects. It 



