GEOGENY. 209 



were soon annihilated. Other species of the same genus suc- 

 ceeded them, and these were found associated with new animals, 

 the ma'stodon and dinotlie'rium, but they soon afterwards became 

 extinct for ever. Still later came the elephants; they only appeared 

 with the carni'vora, the rode'ntia, &c., the species of which were 

 still only the prelude to those which appeared at the same time 

 with man. 



All these successive changes in the series of creatures coincide 

 with the great disturbances of the surface of the globe. It was at 

 the instant of the catastrophes, produced by movements of the soil, 

 that families, genera, species of organic bodies which had until 

 then existed, disappeared. In times of the succeeding calm, on 

 the contrary, the new organization was developed in harmony 

 with the new atmospheric circumstances, and new dispositions 

 of the isothermal lines, &c. 



These details, which observation enables us to add to the 

 recital of Genesis, are in general harmony with the facts, there 

 found briefly enunciated, and of which they are but the develop- 

 ment ; the only difficulty presenting itself is that of the appli- 

 cation of the word day, which, happily, even in the eyes of 

 legitimate judges, from Saint Augustine down, does not seem to 

 possess the value which people have naturally attributed to it. 

 This expression seems in fact to have been adopted, only as an in- 

 dicatio'n of relative epochs, as the means of making understood 

 ind retaining the order and succession of things which were at 

 once revealed. It is clear, indeed, that minute details categorically 

 established by figures, which would satisfy the curiosity of a small 

 number of men, would not be either received or comprehended 

 by the vulgar, who, nevertheless, are entitled to this important 

 instruction. We ourselves often resort to ways still more crooked 

 to make ourselves belter understood by all : it is in this way, for 

 example, we speak of the rising and setting of the sun, to describe 

 the arrival of this luminary to the meridian, to the solstice, &c., 

 although we know very well that we must attribute these pheno- 

 mena to the inverse movements of the earth. 



According to geological observations, this common expression, 

 days, ought to signify epochs* which embrace long periods of 

 time, each being relative to a certain system of creation in which 

 there were different formations of creatures, as well as success- 

 ive extinctions of those previously existing. Each period be- 

 gar. at a particular date, clearly determined, and marked by a 

 catastrophe which overturned the order of things anteriorly esta- 

 .blished on the earth ; it was extended, for a longer or shorter time, 

 "sometimes through succeeding epochs, and often up to the appear- 

 ance of man himself. According to the conjectures of the scien- 

 tific, an immense time elapsed between the formation of the first 

 18* 



