6 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



or many-footed, started into life, and connected 

 the terrestrial tribes with those produced from the 

 waters. In the majority of these, the fins of the 

 fishes and cetaceans, and the wings of the birds, 

 were replaced by legs best fitted for motion on 

 the theatre on which they were to act their part, 

 and to fulfil the will of their Creator. 



The earth was now completely furnished and 

 decorated to receive her destined king and master. 

 The sun, the moon, and the stars were shedding 

 their kindly influences upon her; she and her 

 fellow planets had commenced their annual and 

 diurnal revolutions ; the plants and flowers, her 

 first born progeny, had sprung out of her bosom, 

 and covered her with verdure and beauty ; and 

 the fruit and forest trees flourishing in all their 

 glory of leaf, blossom, and fruit, were ready to 

 minister to the support, comfort, and enjoyment 

 of their future lord: the sea, the air, the earth, 

 were each filled with their appropriate inhabi- 

 tants, and throughout the whole creation was 

 beauty, and grace, and life, and motion, and joy, 

 and jubilee. But still, in the midst of all this ap- 

 parent glory and activity of vegetable and animal 

 life in the new created world, there was not a 

 single being endued with reason and understand- 

 ing ; one that could elevate its thought above the 

 glorious and wonderful spectacle to the great 

 Author of it, or acknowledge and adore its Creator. 



