sea, the birds of the air, and
the _bhemah_ or herbivorous animals. The carnivorous creatures are not
mentioned, and possibly were not included in man's dominion. We shall
find an explanation of this farther on. The nature of man's dominion
we are left to infer. In his state of innocence it must have been a
mild and gentle sway, interfering in no respect wilts the free
exercise of the powers of enjoyment bestowed on animals by the
Creator, a rule akin to that which a merciful man exercises over a
domesticated animal, and which some animals are capable of repaying
with a warm and devoted affection. Now, however, man's rule has become
a tyranny. "The whole creation groans" because of it. He desolates the
face of nature wherever he appears, unsettling the nice balance of
natural agencies, and introducing remediless confusion and suffering
among the lower creatures, even when in the might of his boasted
civilization he professes to renovate and improve the face of nature.
He retains enough of the image of his Maker to enable him to a great
extent to assert his dominion, and to aspire after a restoration of
his original paradise, but he has lost so much that the power which he
retains is necessarily abused to selfish ends.

Man, like the other creatures, was destined to be fruitful and
multiply and replenish the earth. We are also informed in chapter
second that he was placed in a "garden," a chosen spot in the alluvial
plains of Western Asia, belonging to the later geological formations,
and thus prepared by the whole series of prior geological changes,
replenished with all things useful to him, and containing nothing
hurtful, at least in so far as the animal creation was concerned.
These facts, taken in connection, lead to grave questions. How is the
happy and innocent state of man consistent with the contemporaneous
existence of carnivorous and predaceous animals, which, as both
Scripture and geology state, were created in abundance in the sixth
day? How, when confined to a limited region, could he increase and
multiply and replenish the earth? These questions, which have caused
no little perplexity, are easily solved when brought into the light of
our modern knowledge of nature. 1. Every large region of the earth is
inhabited by a group of animals differing in the proportions of
identical species, and in the presence of distinct species, from the
groups inhabiting other districts. There is also sufficient reason to
conc