130 FAMOUS SCOTS 



geologists is divided into three great classes. Lesser 

 divisions of systems, deposits, beds, and strata may 

 exist ; but the master divisions, as he calls them, 

 are simply those three which even the unpractised eye 

 can detect the Palaeozoic, the Secondary, and the 

 Tertiary. The first is the period of extraordinary fauna 

 and flora the period emphatically of forests and huge 

 pines, 'the herb yielding seed after its kind, and tree 

 bearing fruit.' The second is the age of monsters, 

 reptiles, pterodactyls and ichthyosaurs, 'the fowl that 

 flieth above the earth, the great sea-monsters and winged 

 fowl after its kind.' The Tertiary period is that of ' the 

 beasts of the earth and the cattle after their kind.' 

 In each age, it is true, there is a twilight period, a 

 period of morning-dawn and evening-decline; but in 

 the middle of each period it is that we find the great 

 outstanding features above. Thus there would be no 

 contradictions in the record. This, it must be allowed, 

 summarises truly enough the process of creation ; but 

 it leaves out of sight the invertebrata and early fishes of 

 the first period, and regards the succeeding carboni- 

 ferous era as the leading features, while perhaps in 

 some subordinate details it inverts the order of other 

 appearances. 



To the wider objection to the Biblical record, with its 

 light before the creation of the sun upon the fourth day, 

 the vegetation on the third independent of the sun's 

 warming rays, and to other real or supposed contradic- 

 tions, Miller has a highly ingenious reply. We do not 



