622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it was intended to give moral, and not scientific, instruction to those 

 for whom it was written. That for the Adamic race, recent on the 

 earth, and young in faculties, the traditions here incorporated, which 

 were probably far older than the Book, had a natural and a highly 

 moral purpose in conveying to their minds a lively sense of the wise 

 and loving care with which the Almighty Father, who demanded 

 much at their hands, had beforehand given them much, in the provi- 

 dent adaptation of the v.orld to be their dwelling-place, and of the 

 created orders for their use and rule. It appears to me that, given 

 the very nature of the Scriptures, this is clearly the rational point of 

 view. If it is so, then, it follows, that just as the tradition described 

 earth, air, and heaven in the manner in which they superficially pre- 

 sented themselves to the daily experience of man — not scientifically, but 



The common air, the sun, the skies — 

 so he spoke of fishes, of birds, of beasts, of what man was most con- 

 cerned with ; and, last in the series, of man himself, largely and gen- 

 erally, as facts of his experience ; from which great moral lessons of 

 wonder, gratitude, and obedience were to be deduced, to aid him in 

 the great work of his life-training. 



If further proof be wanting, that Avhat the Mosaic writer had in 

 his mind were the creatures with which Adamic man was conversant, 

 we have it in the direct form of verse 28, which gives to man for 

 meat the fruit of every seed-yielding tree, and every seed-yielding 

 herb, and the dominion of every beast, fowl, and reptile living. 

 There is here a marked absence of reference to any but the then 

 living species. 



This, then, is the key to the meaning of the Book, and of the tra- 

 dition, if, as I suppose, it was before the Book, which seems to me to 

 offer the most probable, and therefore the rational guide to its inter- 

 pretation. The question we shall have to face is whether this state- 

 ment so understood, this majestic and touching lesson of the child- 

 hood of Adamic man, stands in such a relation to scientific truth, as 

 far as it is now known, as to give warrant to the inference that the 

 guidance under which it was composed was more than that of faculties 

 merely human, at that stage of development, and likewise of informa- 

 tion, which belonged to the childhood of humanity. 



We have, then, before us one term of the desired comiDarison. 

 Let us now turn to the other. 



And here my first duty is to render my grateful thanks to Pro- 

 fessor Iluxlcy for having corrected my either erroneous or super- 

 annuated assumption as to the state of scientific opinion on the second 

 and third terms of the fourfold succession of life. As one probable 

 doctor sufficed to make an opinion probable, so the dissent of this 

 eminent man would of itself overthrow and pulverize my proposition 

 that there was a scientific consens^(S as to a sequence like that of 

 Genesis in the production of animal life, as between fishes, birds, 



