342 On the Cosmogony of Moses. 
person that could question, whether another had travelled every 
inch of the road from London to Edinburgh, through York and 
Neweastle, merely because he had not named every other inter- 
venient stage? Must the Cosmogony then be exploded, because 
the author has not marked every link in the chain of organiza- 
tion ?—because he has neither pointed out. the precise limit be- 
tween animal and vegetative life, nor distinguished the formation 
of aquatic plants from those belonging to the Iand, nor named 
the species which conjoins the locomotive animals ‘of the Sith 
with those of the szxth day? Should we, it seems according to 
the reasoning of your correspondent F, E s, assign the Lat 
species to the fifth day, ‘¢ we place an order of locomotive beings 
where Moses has not placed them.’’ But though “it is abso- 
Jutely certain that Moses assigns them” to neither of these pe- 
riods, he, as certainly, never designed to exclude from the Cos- 
mogony either the bat species, which connects the locomotive 
animals of the fifth with those of the sixth day, or zodphytes 
and testacea, which link the organized productions of the ff Sifth 
with those of the third day. Having described the order 
which the grand classes of organized beings were produced, ' 
leaves us to systematize, and make our own physiological di- 
stinctions. So imperceptible is the gradation of species among 
organized beings, that it is only within tiiese few years natu- 
ralists have thought proper to transfer corals, &c. from the rank 
of vegetables, among which they were classified as fungite, and 
arrange them as animals under the technical name of xoophytes. 
Even fesfacea do not lose all analogy to vegetables, though they 
rank higher in the scale of existence than zodphytes, and, agree- 
ably to the tenor of the narrative, were probably created some- 
what later. Testacea approach very near to vegetative life; 
their stationary disposition, and their receiving nutriment by 
suction, most likely from the same substances with aquatic plants, 
give them no small resemblance to vegetables. In short, they 
seem a kind of animated fungi, compared with the locomotive 
animals that subsist around them. ‘ 
Whatever coincidence may be discovered between the above 
reasoning and that of Dr. Prichard, in his answer to F. E——s, 
is entirely accidental; for the whole paragraph was written be- 
fore I received your last number. But I ought rather to have 
said that our agreement zecessari/y arises from an impartial 
view of the question, 
4, The waters continuing to decrease, the vegetable kingdom 
became more and more extended, till the conclusion of the fourth 
day, when the sun by its regular operation produced a corre- 
sponding regularity in the motions of the earth, which was now 
rendered 
ae, 
