162 GEOLOGY AND MOSES. 



But in preceding pages it was shown, from the peculiar man- 

 ner in which the impressions of frost-marks, the tracks cf 

 migratory birds, etc., occurred," during the geological formation 

 immediately succeeding the Carboniferous Period (viz., the 

 New Red Sandstone formation), that distinctions of seasons 

 and climates must then clearly have existed, and hence that 

 the sun must then have exerted his direct power upon the earth, 

 which then, as now, varied in its intensity with the different 

 positions assumed by the earth during its orbitual revolution. 

 An atmospheric condition which could thus have admitted of a 

 direct descent of the solar rays, must also have rendered the 

 moon and stars distinctly visible to such of the earth's tenants 

 as had eyes to perceive them ; and in these facts we have an 

 abundant verification of the Mosaic record, as to the work of 

 the fourth day. It consisted simply in those atmospheric 

 clarifications by which the sun, moon, and stars were appoint- 

 ed, or allowed to exercise the office of, ruling the seasons, and 

 dividing time into distinct periods. 



The direct rays of the sun being thus admitted to the 

 earth's surface, the latter consequently became habitable to 

 higher orders of living creatures. Accordingly, the next stage 

 of creation's progress is thus described : " And God said, Let 

 the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that 

 hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open 

 firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and 

 every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought 

 forth after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind." 

 Some of the " moving creatures " here spoken of as introduced 

 into being, were probably wholly aquatic, and others were of 

 the lower orders of air-breathing animals. It is remarkable 

 that the remains of classes of animals here spoken of, first 

 begin to appear in the New Red Sandstone strata, which is 



