124 



KNOW^LEDGE * 



[April 1, 1887. 



a fact involving a high antiquity for the class. So that even 

 were the high claims of certain palieozoic plants established, 

 their seniority as against fishes would not be demonstrated, 

 nor yet rendered probable. 



The. Juniority of Fishes as against Birds. — This is, of course, 

 a scientific fact. Genesis, however, does not expressly teach 

 it. Both classes were created on the fifth day. " One is 

 necessarily mentioned before the other." ( West. Rev. as 

 above.) 



The Juniorit)/ o/Eeptiles as against Beasts. — This juniority 

 is probable. Professor Huxley never asserted it, as Mr. 

 Gladstone supposes. Nor does Genesis assert so. It seems 

 rather to teach then- contemporary origin on the sixth day. 

 Had Mr. Gladstone contended for this, however, or for their 

 origin before beasts during an earlier part of the sixth day, 

 the prior existence of birds on the fifth day would have had 

 to be explained away. The reptiles, however, are submitted 

 to this process instead ; in a manner, too, which it has been 

 .said would have excited the envy of Artemus Ward. 

 " Eeptiles were a family fallen from greatness ; instead of 

 stamjjing on a great period of life its leading character, they 

 merely skulked upon the earth." Mr. Gladstone " would 

 also hold by his previous remark " as to mistranslation aiid 

 " the general structure and efleot of the Mosaic statement," 

 advancing illustrations; these being — (1) that the LXX. 

 represent reptiles " as a sort of appendage to mammals " in a 

 more conspicuous manner than do our versions ; {'2) '■ in the 

 Song of the Three Children, where the four principal orders 

 are recited after the series in Genesis, reptiles are dropped 

 altogether, which suggests either that the present text is 

 unsound, or, perhaps more probably, that they were deemed 

 a secondary and insignificant part of it. 



Professor Huxley replies thus : " I have every respect 

 for the singer of the Song of the Three Children 

 (whoever he may have been) . . . nor do I venture 

 to doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these con- 

 temptible reptiles . . . into an apologetic argument, 

 which otherwise would run quite smoothly [!], is in every 

 way to be deprecated. Still the wretched creatures stand 

 thei-e, importunately demanding notice." Unless Mr. Glad- 

 stone insists that the text being unsound, the terms 

 " creeping thing " and " everything that creepeth upon the 

 earth " mean other than reptiles, or ought to be dropped 

 altogether, the justice of Professor Huxley's demand must be 

 admitted. As to the other argument, the skulking in a day 

 or two late of a class which did stamp upon the mesozoic age 

 its leading character — and one member of which played an 

 important role in the event which immediately succeeds the 

 creation, to say nothing of later occasions, or of the notices 

 taken of other members of the class — was certainly no fault 

 of its own, and it is difficult to imagine what of poetry, or of 

 intelligibility, or of brevity, or of aught else, would have 

 been sacrificed had fowl been formed on the sixth day, and 

 creeping things on the iifth, instead of vice versd. According 

 to some authorities, however, the reptilian class u-as repre- 

 sented before the sixth day.* 



* "TcNINcM: Dr. Lightfoot reads this as 'Amphibia,' and 

 makes it include ' crocodiles, hippopotamets,' &c. . . . Park- 

 hurst says the words seem to include both ' the crocodile and 

 whale species.' Bishop Patrick holds the same view. The word 

 translated ' great whales' in verse 21 is the plural oi: the same 

 word which becomes 'a serpent' in E.xodus vii. 9." — Genesis, its 

 Antharsltip and Authenticity, by Charles Bradlaugh, third edition, 

 1882, p. 69, "International Library of Science and Freethought." 

 " Timninim, that is, crocodiles." — Principal Sir J. \V. Dawson, 

 Hxjwsitor, April 1886. " Remes, 'creeping things' . . . may here 

 betaken to represent the smaller quadrupeds of the land." — Dawson, 

 Idem, or "prowling" things. — Dana, Op. cit. Dr. Fr. H. Reusch, 

 whom Mr. Gladstone modestly recommended to M. Albert Eevilleas 

 a fitter representative of the reconciliation schools than himself, is 

 antagonistic to Mr. Gladstone's reconciliation theories, at any rate, 



The Juniority of Beasts as against Birds. — Mr. Gladstone 

 made a remark indicating his suspicion lest some one should 

 score a point against him by " taking only birds of a very 

 high formation," and not reckoning with Archa^opteryx, 

 Hesperornis, &c., as ISIr. Gladstone himself did — a method 

 in striking contrast to that employed by him when dealing 

 with beasts ; for birds in the " fourfold order " include fossil 

 types, but as to mammals, said Mr. Gladstone, " I wish to 

 be understood as speaking here of the higher or ordinary 

 mammals, which alone I assume to have been known to the 

 Mosaic writer," though why Moses should have known 

 of Archceoptery.v, bitt not of Microlestes, Mr. Gladstone does 

 not explain. If this be consistent procedure, the objections 

 I raised when misled by a lapsus scriheiuli of Mr. Olodd's 

 were answered in anticipation. I then mentioned that 

 Professor Huxley's only challenge to this portion of the 

 fourfold order, if challenge it was meant to be, was the 

 remark that " tlie question of the exact meaning of ' higher' 

 and ' ordinary ' in the case of mammals opens up the 

 prospect of a hopeful logomachy." Having taken the 

 matter in hand, however, " I must presume to animadvert 

 with considerable freedom upon " Mr. Gladstone's (toborrow 

 his phraseology) " mode of dealing with authorities." 



We have the declaration that Professor H. G. Seeley 

 supplies us " very clearly " with the place of birds in 

 the succession of animal life — i.e., as antedating mammals. 

 The Manual i-; mentioned and the pages specified. 

 Turning thereto, or to any of the other pages, no such 

 view is enunciated, " clearly " or otherwise. Indeed, what 

 we do read is that " geological history does not cany us 

 back appreciably towards the origins of the great groups of 

 organic nature." " There is evolution, but it is only the 

 evolution of genera and of ordinal groups, and not of 

 classes." Mr. Gladstone has also perused the statements 

 and diagrams of the Phillips-Etheridge portion of the 

 Manual, but these are confessedly of no avail for the 

 present purpose. 



Next conies Professor Prestwlch's treatise, to the proofs of 

 which Mr. Gladstone had access. Volume I. is now pub- 

 lished, and it is to this that Sir. Gladstone referred, men- 

 tioning in particular two pages, and discovering here an 

 order of succession which places birds as bsfore beasts. 

 This I fail to find on the pages specified or elsewhere. 

 In the table of contents, however, birds do happen to 

 be enumerated before mammals. 



Then follows a postscript reference to the Odontonithes by 

 Professor O. C. Marsh, to indicate the probability that the 

 first " bird " was paljeozoic. It is perfectly true that 

 Professor Marsh has expressed this opinion, in Odontonithes 

 and elsewhere. "For the primal forms of the bird-type we 

 must evidently look to the palieozoic ; and in the rich land 

 fauna of our American pertnian we may yet hope to find 

 the remains of both birds and mammals " (italics mine). 

 This hope as to the turning up of permian mammals has 

 perhaps escaped INIr. Gladstone's notice ; or he might have 

 hesitated to seek an ally in Professor Marsh, as being one 

 liable to " prove too much." 



Professor Marsh has, further, expressed the opinion that 

 volant birds may have originated in triassic times — 

 apparently solely on the ground that a (more or less) 

 volant bird {Arc/iceopteryx) occurs in the formation above, 

 for he discredits altogether the avian character of the 

 footprints — a method of reasoning which clearly compels us 

 to promptly seek for the ancestors of the triassic mammalia 

 in, at the latest, permian strata. This opinion, there- 

 fore, is detrimental to Mr. Gladstone's cause, and is 



so far as the topics here under discussion are concerned. See 

 Nature and the Bible, opportunely translated by Kathleen Lyttelton, 

 vol. i., pp. 100, 330. 



