144 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [ APR. 2, 
Those of which it speaks belong exclusively to the end of the 
long series of ‘‘ populations” which have inhabited the earth, 
leaving millions of years without mention. That the writer 
intended to refer to present living species is evident, not only 
because the terms used apply to existing forms, and mot to the 
first ones, but because he represents God as giving Adam 
dominion over the animals which had just been made, and which, 
in order to be under Adam’s sway, must have been contempora- 
neous with him. 
Secondly, the account places the appearance of the plants of 
which he speaks before present water creatures and fowl, and 
these before present land animals, 
Is thisorder correct? Did grass, herbs, and fruit-trees appear 
before present water animals and present fowl? 
Count de Saporta is good authority. He says in ‘‘ Le Monde 
des Plantes,” page 380: 
«The vegetable kingdom acquired its characteristic traits long 
before the animal kingdom had completed its own; so that prob- 
ably even before the end of the Tertiary, the principal groups, 
and even the genera of the plants which compose the immense 
majority of our actual flore, were established in the limits which 
they still occupy.” 
It is quite probable that new varieties and perhaps new species 
have appeared since the 'lertiary, but there seems to be substan- 
tial identity between the vegetation at the close of the Pliocene, 
and that of to-day.’ 
It seems, therefore, that the work of the latter part of the 
third Mosaic period occurred in what geologists call the Tertiary. 
The present vertebrate animals of the water and air come 
later, for, according to Professor Dana (page 518, ‘‘ Man. 
Geol.,” 3d ed.), no fish, reptile, bird, or mammal reaches back 
to the Tertiary, or, in his own words, ‘‘all the fishes, reptiles, 
birds, and mammals of the Tertiary are extinct.” Whether 
Professor Dana is justified in so broad an assertion may be a 
question, but in a general sense it is true. Living species of 
‘‘whales” and many other water creatures and fowl came, 
1Tf *‘desheh” means only the tender shoots of the herbs and fruit- 
trees, as they broke through the ground, and not grass, then we might 
place the Mosaic flora in the Cretaceous, for then there were for the 
first time in the earth’s history, as Le Conte says (and every other 
geologist for that matter), ‘‘angiosperms both dicotyls and palms;” 
or, in the exquisitely fit language of Genesis, ‘‘ the tree bearing fruit, 
whose seed is inside of it.” 
But for many reasons it is most probable that ‘‘desheh” means what 
we call grass, and, if so, then the epoch must have been in the Tertiary, 
probably at the close, when there were living species of trees, etc. 
