of
the period--the earlier commencing with the creation of the humbler
invertebrates, the later characterized by the great reptiles--which is
the actual state of the case as disclosed by geology.

8. The Creator recognizes the introduction of sentient existence and
volition by _blessing_ this new work of his hands, and inviting the
swarms of the newly peopled world to enjoy that happiness for which
they were fitted, and to increase and fill the earth, inaugurating
thus a new power destined to still higher developments.

When we inquire what information geology affords respecting the period
under consideration, the answer may be full and explicit. Geological
discovery has carried us back to an epoch corresponding with the
beginning of this day, and has disclosed a long and varied series of
living beings, extending from this early period up to the introduction
of the higher races of animals. To enter on the geological details of
these changes, and on descriptions of the creatures which succeeded
each other on the earth, would swell this volume into a treatise on
palaeontology, and would be quite unnecessary, as so many excellent
popular works on this subject already exist. I shall, therefore,
confine myself to a few general statements, and to marking the points
in which Scripture and geology coincide in their respective histories
of this long period, which appears to include the whole of the
Palaeozoic and Mesozoic epochs of geology, with their grand and varied
succession of rock formations and living beings.

In the Primordial or oldest fossiliferous rocks next in succession to
those great Eozoic formations in which protozoa alone have been
discovered, we find the remains of crustaceans, mollusks, and
radiates--such as shrimps, shell-fish, and starfishes--which appear to
have inhabited the bottom of a shallow ocean. Among these were some
genera belonging to the higher forms of invertebrate life, but
apparently as yet no vertebrated animals. Fishes were then introduced,
and have left their remains in the upper Silurian rocks, and very
abundantly in the Devonian and Carboniferous, in the latter of which
also the first reptiles occur, but are principally members of that
lower group to which the frogs and newts and their allies belong. The
animal kingdom appears to have reached no higher than the reptiles in
the Palaeozoic or primary period of geology, and its reptiles are
comparatively small and few; though fishes had at