1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 145 
therefore, according to geology, after the plants of to-day; and, 
as they are the fauna named by Moses, it follows that the work 
of the fifth Genesis period was contemporaneous with the Qua- 
ternary, for in this geological period are found great whales 
and other water vertebrates, and fowl, and of these far the 
larger portion are still living, for ‘‘ no extinct species of fishes, 
amphibians, or reptiles” of that period have been found. 
(Nicholson’s ‘‘ Life History of the Earth,” page 345.) Some 
few kinds of birds then living, as the moas and some other 
wingless species, are now extinct, but they became so in very 
recent times, long after Adam, and perhaps within one or two 
centuries. 
There was, it was true, at the same epoch an abundant mam- 
malian fauna, but it was not composed of species now living, 
for, according to Dana, page 563, ‘‘ Geol.,” ‘‘ the mammals of 
the Quaternary are nearly all extinct.” Le Conte, in his ‘‘ Ge- 
ology.” page 569, speaking of the mammals of the latter part of 
the geological record, says, in substance, that the mammals of 
the Miocene are all extinct, that after them came a new set, also 
extinct, after them another, now extinct; then, in the Quater- 
nary, another which also has disappeared; and, lastly, came 
present species, to wit, the living mammals, the cattle and 
beasts of to-day. 
It would seem that, unless these and other distinguished 
geologists are greatly in the wrong, the fossils attest the correct- 
ness of the Mosaic order. Even if it is true—a question for 
others to decide—that some present mammals came down even 
from the Tertiary, they are few in number, and do not affect 
the conclusion that the present land animals, as a whole, came 
last of all living forms. 
Nor does the fact that there was some overlapping, some 
species of mollusks and others coming down from earlier times, 
militate against the accuracy of the story if we take it just as it 
says, neither adding to it nor taking from it, for it makes no 
claim to universality. It merely says that, at acertain time, the 
earth or the water was to do certain things named, and we know 
that it did then. The fact that other things had been done 
before does not affect the truthfulness of the account. 
There is, however, in the story itself a curious implied recog- 
nition of other living creatures besides those named in the fiats. 
It is in the working out of this central idea—God’s creatorship— 
of which I have spoken. I have said that it pervades every part 
of the narrative, but in the twenty-first and twenty-fifth verses 
there is a broadening of the record which, in the light of geol- 
ogy, is very suggestive. In verse 20 we read: Let the waters 
bring forth certain creatures, not all, or every. But in the next 
