PREDOMINANT THEORY EXAMINED. 151 



surely no reason to expect mammals after reptiles ; 

 yet in this order they came. The Edinburgh re- 

 viewer speaks of the animals as coming in adap- 

 tation to conditions; but this is only true in a 

 limited sense. The groves which formed the 

 coal beds might have been a fitting habitation for 

 reptiles, birds, and mammals, as such groves are 

 at the present day ; yet we see none of the last of 

 these classes, and hardly any trace of the two first 

 in that period of the earth. Where the iguanodon 

 lived, the elephant might have lived ; but there 

 was no elephant at that time. The sea of the 

 Lower Silurian era was capable of supporting 

 fish, but no fish existed. It hence forcibly ap- 

 pears that theatres of life must have lain unservice- 

 able, or in the possession of a tenantry inferior 

 to what might have enjoyed them for many ages ; 

 there surely would have been no such waste 

 allowed, in a system where Omnipotence was 

 working upon the plan of minute attention to 

 specialties. The fact seems to denote that the 

 . actual procedure of the peopling of the earth was 

 J one of a natural kind requiring a long space 

 of time for its evolution. In this supposition 

 the long existence of land without land animals, 

 and more particularly, without the noblest classes 



