44!6 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



pasture; and if this interpretation of that word be admitted, then 

 des'he might signify here plants rather fitted for lying down on, as the 

 mosses and ferns, than for pasture, which would make out a consistent 

 image expressed in this clause or sentence, in opposition to the one 

 derived from the abundance of pasture, which is evidently already 

 sufficiently completed in the terms, " The Lord is my shepherd, I 

 shall not want." This passage, then, when rightly understood, rather 

 serves to confirm the meaning which we have suggested {or deshe. 

 Another passage is Job vi. 5, "Doth the wild ass bray when he hath 

 grass (deshe), or loweth the ox over his fodder?" but no stress can 

 be laid upon this, when we consider that both the ass and the horse 

 cat, of choice, various species of ferns and equiseta, a fact which it is 

 not unreasoiiable to suppose might be known to the author of a book 

 which coDitains so much accurate and interesting natural history as 

 this of Job. The plants, whatever they might be, which formed a 

 supply for the wild ass, are at least obviously set in contradistinction 

 to those which formed the fodder of the ox. The third passage is 

 Jeremiah 1. 11, "because ye are grown fat as the heifer at grass 

 .(deshe)." But there is, in a great number of manuscripts, a various 

 reading for deshe here, by which the meaning becomes, "ye are 

 grown fat, like a heifer thrashing, or treading, out the corn;" and sev- 

 eral circumstances shew the latter reading to be the more probably 

 correct one. 



It remains, then, very highly probable, upon the whole, that deshe, 

 in the 11th and 12th verses, is intended to express the cryptogamous 

 vegetation. 



In our observations on the terms empl5^ed in the history of the cre- 

 ation of the animals, we shall arrive at some important conclusions 

 that are more absolutely certain. 



The first thing that we would observe in regard to this, is, that there 

 are two distinct words, of very diffisrent origin, which the English 

 translators have rendered, promiscuously, creeping creatures or thing, 

 and also moving creatures, following, no doubt, the authority of the 

 Septuagint, which has given z^nzra, for both ; thus occasioning a great 

 confusion instead of a clear and perspicuous order of creations exhib- 

 ited in the Hebrew text. The first of these words is sheretz, as in 

 verse 20th, in the history of the fifth day's work, " God said. Let the 

 waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature (sheretz);" in the 

 margin, the creeping creature. This word is from a verb, which sig- 

 nifies to bring forth, or to increase, or to multiply abundantly, being 

 the very verb which is rendered bring forth abundantly in the 20th 



