Creation of Plants. 313 



After that, higher types of plant life appear, those 

 with flowers and seeds ; and at last, at ihe time or 

 near the time of the introduction of man, those 

 plants most useful to him, the fruits and cereals, 

 were introduced. Now, if we look upon the intro- 

 duction of plant life, as one great epoch, how per- 

 fectly it corresponds with the Bible account. "And 

 God said. Let the earth bring forth 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." 



The word rendered grass, should be rendered 

 the tender plant or the budding plant springing up. 

 That it was not ordinary grass is apparent, because 

 that belongs with seed-bearing plants. The de- 

 scription applies well to the early plants that pro- 

 duced no proper seeds, the flowcrless plants that 

 flourished so abundantly till after the coal period. 

 We have, then, the creation of plants first. In this 

 both records agree. We have the tender plants, the 

 seed-bearing plants, and the fruits whose seed is in 

 themselves. In this account both records agree. 

 We have plants coming to their greatest luxuriance 

 in the early age ; so that altogether the great epoch 

 which in geology naturally attracts our attention, 

 after the raising of the land, is the introduction of 

 plant life, and here the two records agree. 



If any say that in the early rocks we have more 

 animal than plant fossils, we admit it ; but every 

 man who knows anything of geology knows why. 

 The early plants were more easily decomposed than 



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