s, not flowerless and seedless algae.
Again, reptiles are described in Genesis as created on the fifth day;
but reptilia and batrachians existed as early as the time when the
lower carboniferous and even old red sandstone were in course of
deposition, as their tracks on those rocks in Nova Scotia and
Pennsylvania evince.[56] In short, if we maintain that Moses describes
fossils as well as living species, we find discrepancy instead of
correspondence between his order of creation and that of geology." In
this objection it is assumed that the geological history of the earth
goes back to the third day of creation, or, in other words, to the
dawn of organic life. None of the greater authorities in geology
would, however, now venture to make such an assertion, and the
progress of geology is rapidly making the contrary more and more
probable. The fact is that, on the supposition that the days of
creation are long periods, the whole series of the fossiliferous rocks
belongs to the fifth and sixth days; and that for the early plant
creation of the third day, and the great physical changes of the
fourth, geology has nothing as yet to show, except a mass of
metamorphosed eozoic rocks which have hitherto yielded no fossils
except a few Protozoa; but which contain vast quantities of carbon in
the form of graphite, which may be the remains of plants.

I have much pleasure in quoting, as a further answer to these
objections, the following from Professor Dana:[57]

"Accepting the account in Genesis as true, the seeming discrepancy
between it and geology rests mainly here: Geology holds, and has held
from the first, that the progress of creation was mainly through
secondary causes; for the existence of the science presupposes this.
Moses, on the contrary, was thought to sustain the idea of a simple
fiat for each step. Grant this first point to science, and what
farther conflict is there? _The question of the length of time_, it is
replied. But not so; for if we may take the record as allowing more
than six days of twenty-four hours, the Bible then places no limit to
time. _The question of the days and periods_, it is replied again. But
this is of little moment in comparison with the first principle
granted. Those who admit the length of time and stand upon days of
twenty-four hours have to place geological time _before_ the six days,
and then assume a chaos and reordering of creation, on the six-day and
fiat principle, after a previo