ed in the sense of a "wild beast." In a few places, like the
other terms already noticed, it is used of all kinds of animals, but
that above stated is its general meaning, and perfectly accords with
the requirements of the passage.

The creation of the sixth day therefore includes--1st, the herbivorous
mammalia; 2d, a variety of terrestrial reptilia, and other lower forms
not included in the work of the previous day; 3d, the carnivorous
mammalia. It will be observed that the order in the two verses is
different. In verse 24th it is herbivora, "creeping things," and
carnivora. In verse 25th it is carnivora, herbivora, and "creeping
things." One of these may, as in the account of the fifth day,
indicate the order of _time_ in the creation, and the other the order
of _rank_ in the animals made, or there may have been two divisions of
the work, in the earlier of which herbivorous animals took the lead,
and in the later those that are carnivorous. In either case we may
infer that the herbivora predominated in the earlier creations of the
period.

It is almost unnecessary to say this period corresponds with the
Tertiary or Cainozoic era of geologists. The coincidences are very
marked and striking. As already stated, though in the later secondary
period there were great facilities for the preservation of mammals in
the strata then being deposited, only a few small species of the
humblest order have been found; and the occurrence of the higher
orders of this class is to some extent precluded by the fact that the
place in nature now occupied by the mammals was then provided for by
the vast development of the reptile tribes. At the very beginning of
the tertiary period all this was changed; most of the gigantic
reptiles had disappeared, and terrestrial mammals of large size and
high organization had taken their place. Perhaps no geological change
is more striking and remarkable than the sudden disappearance of the
reptilian fauna at the close of the mesozoic, and the equally abrupt
appearance of numerous species of large mammals, and this not in one
region only, but over both the great continents, and not only where a
sudden break occurs in the series of formations, but also where, as in
Western America, they pass gradually into each other. During the whole
tertiary period this predominance of the mammalia continued; and as
the mesozoic was the period of giant reptiles, so the tertiary was
that of great mammals. It is a singula