794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fishes ; therefore I can not accept an order which makes birds succeed 

 fishes. Once more, as it is quite certain that the term " fowl " includes 

 the bats — for in Leviticus xi, 13-19, we read, " And these shall ye have 

 in abomination among the fowls . . . the heron after its kind, and the 

 hoopoe, and the bat " — it is obvious that bats are also said to have 

 been created at stage No. 3, And as bats are mammals, and their ex- 

 istence obviously presupposes that of terrestrial " beasts," it is quite 

 clear that the latter could not have first appeared as No. 5. I need not 

 repeat my reasons for doubting whether man came " last of all." 



As the latter half of Mr. Gladstone's sixfold order thus shows itself 

 to be wholly unauthorized by, and inconsistent with, the plain language 

 of the Pentateuch, I might decline to discuss the admissibility of its 

 former half. 



But I will add one or two remarks on this point also. Does Mr. 

 Gladstone mean to say that in any of the works he has cited, or in- 

 deed anywhere else, he can find scientific warranty for the assertion 

 that there was a period of land — by which I suppose he means dry 

 land (for submerged land must needs be as old as the separate exist- 

 ence of the sea) — " anterior to all life " ? f 



It may be so, or it may not be so ; but where is the evidence 

 which would justify any one in making a positive assertion on the sub- 

 ject ? What competent paleontologist will afiirm, at this present 

 moment, that he knows anything about the period at which life origi- 

 nated, or will assert more than the extreme probability that such origin 

 was a long way antecedent to any traces of life at present known ? 

 What physical geologist will afiirm that he knows when dry land 

 began to exist, or will say more than that it was probably very much 

 earlier than any extant direct evidence of terrestrial conditions indi- 

 cates ? 



I think I know pretty well the answers which the authorities quoted 

 by Mr. Gladstone would give to these questions ; but I leave it to 

 them to give them if they think fit. 



If I ventured to speculate on the matter at all, I should say it is 

 by no means certain that sea is older than dry land, inasmuch as a 

 solid terrestrial surface may very well have existed before the earth 

 was cool enough to allow of the existence of fluid water. And in this 

 case dry land may have existed before the sea. As to the first appear- 

 ance of life, the whole argument of analogy, whatever it may be worth 

 in such a case, is in favor of the absence of living beings until long 

 after the hot-water seas had constituted themselves ; and of the sub- 

 sequent appearance of aquatic before terrestrial forms of life. But 

 whether these " protoplasts " would, if we could examine them, be 

 reckoned among the lowest microscopic algae, or fungi, or among 

 those doubtful organisms which lie in the debatable land between ani- 

 mals and plants, is, in my judgment, a question on which a prudent 

 biologist will reserve his opinion. 



