WORK OF FIFTII DAY. 163 



the formation next above the carboniferous system, and which 

 must have been succeeded, and measurably accompanied by 

 the clarification of the atmosphere, spoken of as the work of 

 the previous day. For it is in the Red Sandstone stratifi- 

 cation that we find the footprints of frogs, tortoises, and birds. 

 The latter were mainly, as Professor Hitchcock intimates, of 

 the Grallse family, or the family of waders, and were therefore, 

 with the former, intimately connected with the water, as the 

 Mosaic account implies. There can be but little doubt, there- 

 fore, that these birds were the very " fowl " of which Moses 

 speaks. 



The other part of the work of this period, according to the 

 common translation, consisted in the creation of "great whales" 

 etc. This, admitting our definition of the word " day," forms 

 the only apparent discrepancy between geology and the 

 sacred cosmogony ; for whales do not appear to have existed 

 before a somewhat advanced stage of the so-called Tertiary 

 Formation, and a very long period after this time. But 

 criticism resolves even this apparent discrepancy into a sur- 

 prising harmony. Dr. Adam Clarke, who wrote before 

 geology was much cultivated, and hence without the slightest 

 idea of making out a harmony between its teachings and the 

 declarations of Moses, remarks upon the expression in the 

 passage before us : " Though this is generally understood by 

 the different versions as signifying whales, yet the original 

 must be understood, rather as a general than a particular* 

 term, comprising all great aquatic animals." Now the 

 marine saurians were " great aquatic animals." These, with 

 amphibious and terrestrial reptiles of enormous size, came in 

 during the deposition of the New Red Sandstone, and ex- 

 tensively characterized the whole so-called Secondary For- 

 mation. Thus the Mosaic account of the work of the fifth 



