724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Eve, presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the middle 

 ages and Reformation period ; hence it was that, when the dis- 

 covery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared 

 to be " models of his works approved or rejected by the great 

 Artificer, outlines of future creations, sports of Nature/' or " ob- 

 jects placed in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity " ; 

 and this kind of explanation lingered on until in our own time 

 that excellent naturalist, Mr. Gosse, in his anxiety to save the 

 literal account in Genesis, has urged that Jehovah tilted and 

 twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through them, scratched 

 the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them the marks of 

 erosion by water, and set Niagara pouring all in an instant, thus 

 mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but for his 

 own glory/' * 



The next important development of theological reasoning had 

 regard to the divisions of the animal kingdom. 



Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring 

 mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the 

 question therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers 

 and serpents, thorns and thistles ? The answer was found in 

 theological considerations upon sin : To man's first disobedience 

 all woes were due. Great men for eighteen hundred years devel- 

 oped the theory that before Adam's disobedience there was no 

 death, and therefore neither ferocity nor venom. 



Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are 

 worthy of a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed 

 and emphasized the view that the vegetable as well as the animal 

 kingdom was cursed on account of man's sin. Two hundred years 

 later this utterance had been echoed on from father to father of 

 the Church until it was caught by Bede ; he declared that before 

 man's fall animals were harmless, but became poisonous or hurt- 

 ful on account of sin, and he said, " Thus fierce and poisonous 

 animals were created for terrifying man, because God foresaw 

 that he would sin, in order that he might be made aware of the 

 final punishment of hell." 



\ * For the citation from Lactantius, see Divin. Instit., lib. ii, cap. xi, in Migne, tome vi, 

 pp. 311, 312; for St. Augustine's reat phrase, see the De Genes, ad litt, ii, 5 ; for St. 

 Ambrose, see lib. i, cap. ii ; for Vincent de BeauvaSs, see the Speculum Naturale, lib. i, 

 cap. ii, and lib. ii, cap. xv and xxx ; also Bourgeat, Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, Paris, 

 1856, especially chaps, vii, xii, and xvi ; for Cardinal d'Ailly, see the Imago Mundi, and 

 for Reisch, see the various editions of the Margarita Philosophica ; for Luther's state- 

 ments, see Luther's Schriften, ed. Walch, Halle, 1740, Commentary on Genesis, vol. i ; 

 for Calvin's view of the creation of the animals, including the immutability of species, see 

 the Comm. in Gen., tome i of his Opera omnia, Amst., 1671, cap. i, v. xx, p. 6, also cap. ii, 

 v. ii, p. 8, and elsewhere ; for Bossuet, see his Discours sur 1'Histoire universelle, (Euvres 

 de Bossuet, tome v, Paris, 1846 ; for Lightfoot, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 

 1822; for Bede, see the Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, p. 21. 



