792 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



And, fourtlily, that it has described the successive origins of tlie five great 

 categories of present life with which human experience was and is conversant, 

 in that order which geological authority confirms. 



By comparison with a sentence on page 627, in which a fivefold 

 order is substituted for the "fourfold order," on which the "plea for 

 Revelation " was originally founded, it appears that these five catego- 

 ries are " plants, fishes, birds, mammals, and man," which, Mr. Glad- 

 stone affirms, " are given to us in Genesis in the order of succession in 

 which they are also given by the latest geological authorities." 



I must venture to demur to this statement. I showed, in my pre- 

 vious paper, that there is no reason to doubt that the terra "great sea 

 monster" (used in Genesis i, 21) includes the most conspicuous of great 

 sea animals — namely, whales, dolphins, porpoises, manatees, and du- 

 gongs ; * and, as these are indubitable mammals, it is impossible to 

 affirm that mammals come after birds, which are said to have been 

 created on the same day. Moreover, I pointed out that, as these Ceta- 

 cea and Sirenia are certainly modified land animals, their existence im- 

 plies the antecedent existence of land mammals. 



Furthermore, I have to remark that the term " fishes," as used tech- 

 nically in zoology, by no means covers all the moving creatures that 

 have life, which are bidden to " fill the waters in the seas " (Genesis i, 

 20-22). Marine mollusks and Crustacea, echinoderms, corals, and fora- 

 minifera are not technically fishes. But they are abundant in the pa- 

 leozoic rocks, ages upon ages older than those in which the first evi- 

 dences of true fishes appear. And, if in a geological book Mr. Glad- 

 stone finds the quite true statement that plants appeared before fishes, 

 it is only by a complete misunderstanding that he can be led to imag- 

 ine it serves his purpose. As a matter of fact, at the present moment, 

 it is a question whether, on the bare evidence afforded by fossils, the 

 marine creeping thing or the marine plant has the seniority. No cau- 

 tious paleontologist would express a decided opinion on the matter. 

 But, if we are to read the Pentateuchal statement as a scientific docu- 

 ment (and, in spite of all protests to the contrary, those who bring it 

 into comparison with science do seek to make a scientific document of 

 it), then, as it is quite clear that only terrestrial plants of high organi- 

 zation are spoken of in verses 11 and 12, no paleontologist would hesi- 

 tate to say that, at present, the records of sea animal life are vastly 

 older than those of any land-plant describable as " grass, herb yielding 

 seed, or fruit-tree." 



Thus, although, in Mr. Gladstone's " Defense," the " old order 

 passeth into new," his case is not improved. The fivefold order is no 

 more "affirmed in our time by natural science " to be " a demonstrated 

 conclusion and established fact " than the fourfold order was. Natural 



* Both dolphins and dugonga occur in the Red Sea, porpoises and dolphins in the Med- 

 iterranean ; 80 that the " Mosaic writer " may well have been acquainted with them. 



