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of the vegetable system, yield the strongest grounds of belief, that 

 the earth, in its antediluvian state, was most plentifully stocked 

 with plants and trees of every kind and size. The employment 

 which was allotted to Adam, for " the Lord God took the man, 

 and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it*," 

 and the extensive space which this garden is implied to have filled, 

 for " out of the ground (of this garden) made the Lord God to 

 grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food," as 

 well as the general scenery, and the most prominent circumstances 

 in this history of the first man, all concur to shew, that the man- 

 date of the Creator was, in this respect, completely fulfilled, and 

 that " the earth brought forth grass and herb, yielding seed after 

 its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after 

 his kind-)-." 



Agreeable to the same sacred tradition, the earth was peopled 

 from a single pair ; and, from various particulars which appear in 

 the history of their immediate descendants, we may perceive, that 

 the arts which they possessed, and the kind of life which they led, 

 accorded with those which the historians of later times have shewn 

 to have been adopted by the aboriginal inhabitants of every country. 

 Their dress was simple ; and their employments, that of keeping of 

 cattle, and of tilling the ground, were those of man in his rudest 

 and most uncivilized state. 



After a certain period, seven generations from Adam, we are told 

 the arts of civil life began to appear. " Jabal was the father of 

 such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle Jubal was the 

 father of such as handle the harp and organ and Tubal Cain was 

 the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron:):." Whether 

 this relation is to be taken literally, and that these arts were actu- 

 ally invented during the eighth generation of mankind, or whether 



* Genesis ii. 15. t Genesis i. 12. J Genesis v. 



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