150 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [APR. 2, 
We pass on to the next stage. 
At first, after the earth had cooled so far that day and night 
began their alternation, geology tells us that it was enveloped in 
aqueous vapors of enormous depth, and that the next step in 
fitting it for life—vegetable or animal—was to thin out these 
vapors, till, as now, there was a clear, open expanse separating 
the waters above it from those below it. 
The next step recorded in Genesis is wonderfully like this: 
‘God made an expanse—most literally, a thinning out with 
violence and noise—in the midst of the waters.” 
Geology tells us, too, that the atmosphere, after this disper- 
sion of the dense clouds, was loaded with poisonous gases. The 
atmosphere was not good, and if the reader will turn to Genesis, 
he will see that the verdict good, which is found in the five other 
accounts, is omitted from this—an omission wholly inexplicable 
till now. 
Geology says that at first the land was under water, and so 
does Genesis. They agree, too, in saying that the waters are 
gathered into one place, for the oceans are parts of one great 
basin. 
Geology tells us that the next work was to so purify the waters 
and to so enlarge and enrich the land that they became good for 
modern types of plants and animals; that, after they had become 
thus fitted, modern vegetation appeared, but not as yet present 
living species of animals. 
This story of geology reads like a paraphrase of Genesis. 
There we are told the land appeared, and it and the waters were 
pronounced good, and after that, there were fruit-trees and 
grasses. 
Geology tells of a strange climatic change after modern plants 
had appeared. It tells also of ‘‘zoneless climates,” climates 
apparently without change of seasons, of uniformity of environ- 
ment, such that, till late in the world’s history, the same plants 
grew indifferently in the highest and lowest latitudes. Since 
light is one of the most important of the forces affecting plant 
life, it would seem that, after the Tertiary, the axis of the earth, 
from some cause unknown to science, passed from a nearly per- 
pendicular position to its present obliquity. 
It is remarkable that Genesis places next after present plants 
a change of some kind introducing seasons, affecting the days, 
and making the year an easily recognized measure of time, and 
says nothing of weeks or months—an omission entirely in ac- 
cordance with the fact that an increase in the obliquity of the 
earth’s axis would not affect them. 
After this transaction, whatever it was, came present water 
animals and fowl, and, yet later, present land animals. 
