32 The discoveries of Geology 
We had found it already stated in the 1st verse, that the heavens and 
the earth were created in the beginning, antecedently to the work of 
the six days, by which they were reduced to their present order, and 
the earth was peopled with organized beings. It would seem an un- 
warrantable interpretation to exclude the sun, moon, and stars from 
among the objects expressed by the general terms, the heavens and 
the earth. It is the most obvious interpretation, that they were then 
created, and were lighted up on the first day, but that it was only 
during the fourth epoch, that they were made, the greater light to 
rule over the present day, and the lesser light to rule over the pres- 
ent night, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and for 
years, according to the measures of time which we now find estab- 
lished by them. This part of the history, then, when interpreted in 
consistency with the Ist verse, and without any violence to the terms, 
implies, in the common language of men, which, in all nations, refers 
the diurnal and annual revolutions of the heavenly bodies to the mo- 
tions of these bodies themselves, that the earth was, during this 
epoch, finally brought into its present orbit. 
The work of the third epoch was the appearance of the dry land, 
and the creation of the vegetable kingdom. The history of the 
latter, in our common translation, is, v. 11, “* God said, Let the earth 
bring forth grass (in the margin tender grass), the herb yielding seed, 
and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, 
upon the earth: and it was so.” YV. 12, “ And the earth brought 
forth grass, and the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree 
yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind.” The terms 
grass (in Hebrew, deshe), herb (Hebrew, oeseb), and tree (Hebrew, 
etz), are here all put disjunctively in the Hebrew; there being only 
one conjunction in the twelfth verse between herb and tree, which 
does not affect the disjunctive character of the three terms, as it is.a 
common practice in the Hebrew writings to couple, in this manner, 
the two last of a series of disjunctive terms, as, for example, the 
names of the four kings in Genesis xiv. 1. In the two last of these 
terms, herb and tree, we find a recognition of a remarkable natural 
distinction among the vegetable tribes, and this very circumstance 
would Jead us to infer, that the first term, which has obviously pre- 
sented a difficulty to our translators, since they have given two inter- 
pretations of it, is intended to express some class or tribe of the 
vegetable kingdom, naturally distinguished from herbs and trees, as 
they are from one another. The term in question (deshe) is a noun 
