an the flora of the succeeding Silurian and Carboniferous
eras, we may then suppose that we have penetrated to the monuments of
this third creative aeon. The only other alternative by which these
verses can be reconciled with geology is that adopted by the late Hugh
Miller, who supposes that the plants of the third day are those of the
Carboniferous period; but, besides the apparent anachronism involved
in this, we now know that the coal flora consisted mainly of
cryptogams allied to ferns and club-mosses, and of gymnosperms allied
to the pines and cycads, the higher orders of plants being almost
entirely wanting. For these reasons we are shut up to the conclusion
that this flora of the third day must have its place before the
Palaeozoic period of geology.

To those who are familiar with the vast lapse of time required by the
geological history of the earth, it may be startling to ascribe the
whole of it to three or four of the creative days. If, however, it be
admitted that these days were periods of unknown duration, no reason
remains for limiting their length any farther than the facts of the
case require. If in the strata of the earth which are accessible to us
we can detect the evidence of its existence for myriads of years, why
may not its Creator be able to carry our view back for myriads more.
It may be humbling to our pride of knowledge, but it is not on any
scientific ground improbable, that the oldest animal remains known to
geology belong to the middle period of the earth's history, and were
preceded by an enormous lapse of ages in which the earth was being
prepared for animal existence, but of which no records remain, except
those contained in the inspired history.

It would be quite unphilosophical for geology to affirm either that
animal life must always have existed, or that its earliest animals are
necessarily the earliest organic beings. To use, with a slight
modification, the words of an able thinker on these subjects,[88]
"For ages the prejudice prevailed that the historical period, or that
which is coeval with the life of man, exhausted the whole history of
the globe. Geologists removed that prejudice," but must not substitute
"another in its place, viz., that geological time is coeval with the
globe itself, or that organic life always existed on its surface."

A second doubt as to the existence of this primitive flora may be
based on the statement that it included the highest forms of plants.
Ha