WeUingtou Philosopliical Society. 647 



in plant-life suited to the clearer heavens, when sun, moon, 

 and stars were now visible. This period would seem to 

 correspond with the fifth day of creation, and to have its 

 termination in that second pause, or great diminution of life, 

 which seems to have occurred between the Secondary and 

 Tertiary periods. With the commencement of the Tertiary 

 period life-activity bursts forth again, and new forms appear — 

 great terrestrial mammals, higher kinds of vegetation, flowers, 

 fruits, and insects, and finally domestic animals and man. 



The correspondence in all essential features between the 

 Scriptural account and the facts of nature is complete. 

 Science fills out the pictures with endless and wonderful 

 details, and teaches us that the days of creation were not 

 days of twenty -four hours, but of many thousands of years, 

 and the use of the word in Scripture to denote long periods 

 of time, in numerous places, removes all difficulty on that ac- 

 count. But science can only trace the facts in the order of their 

 occurrence, and form conclusions more or less approximately 

 true as to the duration of successive periods : it can give no 

 account of the origin of the Cosmos. We can trace in many 

 cases effects back to their immediate causes ; but even then 

 the interworking of the various forces is so complicated that 

 we are often baffled in our search, and always we are foiled 

 in our attempts by scientific methods to reach the origin of 

 matter or of energy in their varied manifestations. Chemists 

 tell us that their most powerful means of analysis have 

 hitherto failed to reduce the number of simple substances, such 

 as gold, silver, iron, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, &c., below a 

 certain number ; but philosophers hold that eventually we shall 

 discover a primitive atom, or molecule, from which all these 

 substances have been built up. It may be so, but at present 

 we know nothing of this primitive molecule, or of the mode in 

 which these varied forms of matter have been produced. The 

 case seems very similar with regard to plant and animal life. 

 Naturalists inform us that there are so many kinds or species 

 of life ; each species reproduces itself, and so collectively lives 

 on in its separate life : but hitherto the attempt to transmute 

 one kind of life into another has been as futile as the attempt 

 to transmute iron into gold. Philosophers hold that there 

 was a primitive cell, or germ of life, from which all the varied 

 kinds of life have been built up. It may be so ; but at present 

 we know nothing of this protean germ. I think that the 

 suggestion I threw out with regard to the lower and higher 

 kinds of plant-life — viz., that the earlier and simpler forms 

 might have contained potentially the higher and later forms — 

 has been definitely stated before by some writer on the subject, 

 and it may be that such an evolutionary mode of creation was 

 actually adopted in this and other similar cases — an evolution 



