1870.] Notices of Scientific Worls. 239 



ject that lias already led to the publication of so many speculative 

 books. 



The chronology of the Bible, he admits, does not go back to the 

 beginning of the world. There may have been, he thinks, a long 

 interval of time between the creation of the world, and the work of 

 the six days. He regards the six days as probably of indefinite, 

 though not necessarily of unequal length, and proceeds to arrange 

 the geological formations into six divisions to indicate the different 

 work done on each of the days. Apparently the seventh day is going 

 on at the present time. Taking the history of organic life into con- 

 sideration, he regards plants and trees as created on the third day 

 ( = Carboniferous Period) ; reptiles, fish, and birds on the fifth day 

 ( == Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic Periods) ; and the beasts of 

 the earth, including man, on the sixth day ( = Tertiaries, &c). The 

 other three days were devoted to light, sun, moon, stars, &c, and we 

 must not expect to find geological indications of them. 



Eespecting the fact that organic life, both plants and animals, 

 prevailed upon the earth for many ages before the Carboniferous 

 Period began, we need do no more than quote Dr. Molloy's ingenious 

 answer : — " The sacred writer tells us, no doubt, that on the third day 

 God created plants and trees ; but he does not say, either expressly 

 or otherwise, that previous to the third day the earth was devoid of 

 vegetation. 



"Again, we read that reptiles, fish, and birds were created on the 

 fifth day. But there is nothing in the language of the inspired 

 narrative from which it can be inferred that these several classes of 

 animal life may not have been represented, before that time, by many 

 and various species : though, probably, it was only on the fifth day 

 that they were developed in such vast numbers, and assumed such 

 gigantic proportions, as to become the most conspicuous objects of 

 creation." 



We have, in the foregoing brief notice, given some idea of the 

 scope of Dr. Molloy's volume. If we could see the feasibility of 

 arriving at any close agreement between geological facts and the 

 history given in Genesis, we should welcome such a volume as this 

 one, coming as it evidently does from an able and candid writer. But 

 when a strained interpretation has to be put upon the one history 

 so as to make it accord with the other, and especially when it is 

 found needful to adopt such explanations as that above quoted, we 

 cannot but feel that this, as well as almost every other attempt at 

 dividing geological time into the procrustean limit of six periods, 

 representing the six days mentioned in Genesis, helps us in no way 

 towards a satisfactory concordance between the testimony of Moses 

 and the testimony of the rocks. 



A perusal of the first part of Dr. Molloy's work — especially the 

 very impartial manner in which he discusses the facts and deductions 



