IX THE CREATION STOKY OF GENESIS. 



81 



surface of the globe, every species of which has since becoice 

 extinct. That fauna was marked {inter alia) by the incipient 

 development of organs of vision in the trilobites and (later) in 

 the palaeozoic Ganoid fishes in response to the feeble light 

 wliich leached the now non-luminous earth from the sun and 

 other luminous bodies. The bulk of that ocean included the 

 present waters of the globe added to the present polar ice- 

 caps and the subterranean waters. 



As the lithosphere and the .hydrosphere cooled, so the 

 atiiiospJierc gradually cleared, as a physical necessity ; while 

 contraction of the former caused its form to depart from the 

 strict geometric regulaiity of a spheroid ; the water collected 

 into the ])rimitive ocean-basins as the simple effect of 

 gravitation, and " the dry land appeared," to yield the land-flora 

 which, beginning in the Devonian, reached its maximum 

 development in the Carboniferous period, as our y)lanet w^as 

 more exposed to solar rays, under the influence of which the 

 richly- laden atmosphere of the period furnished an ample 

 supply of the I'ood-stuff' of plants (carbon-dioxide, COg), along 

 with a plentiful supply of free oxygen, whicli is as necessary for 

 the respiration of [ilants* as carbon-dioxide and sunlight are 

 necessary for the assimilation by them of carbon. A tempera- 

 ture of 70° to 80° Fahr. seems to liave prevailed universally. 



It mav be fairly maintained that the first ten verses of the\ 

 first chapter of Grenesis cover, as a sketchy outline (wanting of j 

 course in many details) the evolutionary liistory of our planet I 

 down to about the age of the Old lied Sandstone ; and that the 

 next ten verses cover that stage of the same progressive develop- ^ 

 ment of our earth and the solar system, wliich is covered by the \ 

 Carboniferous and Permian (or Dyas), considered as one \ 

 continuous period with the Devonian, which in a broad sense j 

 palaeontology seems to justify .f 



When we look at the abnormal facies of the English Trias, 

 that period seems to present a great break in the continuous 

 development of life-forms; but this is less the case in the German 

 Trias, and in the Trias of the Eastern Alps we find the actual 

 palaiontological record of the progressive nature of the changes 



* See StirHnf(, infra. The hypothesis that the vital action of 

 vegetation orioiuated tlie oxygen of the atnK)S])liere is utterly untenable. 



t For a more extensive study of the physif)grap]nc conditions of our 

 planet during the Palaeozoic ai>e, soe Prof. Hermann Credner, Elemeate 

 der Gcologie^eth edition, pp. 408, 441, 465, 495, 506, 534, 535 ; also Prof. 

 Zittel, Aus der Urzeit, pp. 226-229, 254-262. 



