THE LIVING WORLD. 
*5 
years is as a day, hence who shall make so bold as to declare that the 
six so-called days of creation constituted a period of one hundred and 
forty-four hours of time as we now measure it? Even within the compara¬ 
tively recent records of history the length of the day has been computed 
differently, and in the original Hebrew, in which Genesis was written, the 
term translated as day may also mean period. The order in which God spoke 
creation is proven by such evidence as the eternal rocks, and conforms exactly with 
the records of Genesis, a thing most surprising if we reject the claim of 
inspiration; but by every test which scientists are able to apply, this corrobor¬ 
ation is full and complete, if we but use the term period where that of day is 
employed, a substitution which every theologian has agreed to. 
Proceeding therefore upon the theory explained, and which every 
investigator heartily endorses, we may briefly consider some of the primitive 
forms of animal life that existed before man was created. We are able to 
determine what much of this life was by the discovery of fossil remains which 
everywhere abound as will now be explained, preliminary to the introduction 
of those forms now existent, and in which our chief interest must lie. 
FOSSIL REMAINS OF EXTINCT ANIMALS. 
The term fossil is used by geologists, in a restricted sense, to designate the 
petrified remains of animals or plants, which we find in abundance de¬ 
posited, most probably, in the order of their extinction. These fossils serve to 
conclusively show that God must have created different species of both animals 
and plants at widely different periods. In many instances it has been shown 
that one order, or species, existed for a long space of time and then became 
extinct before a new order succeeded. This is most surprising, but none the less 
true. It is also well demonstrated that many of these successive orders appeared 
and * passed out of existence in which vast periods of time must have elapsed, 
before man was created. As man is the most perfect of God’s creatures, it is 
but the natural sequence of gradual development that he should be the last to 
appear, as the flower does not burst full-blown at once, but passes first through 
many changes and gradual^ opens from the bud. W hen the master-piece . of 
God’s work was given to have dominion over the earth and every living thing 
thereon we are prepared to believe that the world had passed through very 
numerous and surprising changes. The igneous rocks, vitrified, or glazed by 
the action of fire in some cases, and left in the form of tufa, pumice or basalt 
in others, attest the fact that at one time the earth must have been enveloped 
in flames’, under whose effect it underwent many changes, which now afford 
proof of design, being as they are, evidences of the establishment of an order of 
things adapted to the predetermined nature of that perfect creature about to be 
sent to exercise dominion over the living creatures that preceded him. By the 
same evidences we learn that before man was ushered into being the distribution 
of water on our planet was very different from the present m that where 
continents now exist, there was at one time a great ocean, and where now the 
sea rolls in perpetual unrest, was once immense bodies of land, if not continents. 
The great vallevs and cleavages through mountains are the imprints of ocean s 
fingers or beds ~ of what were once fresh-water lakes. Such wonderful changes 
of surface of course produced corresponding changes of climate; for as the 
mountains uprose they formed new water-sheds and affected the temperature no 
