ent life with which human
experience was and is conversant, in that order which geological
authority confirms.

By comparison with a sentence on page 14, in which a fivefold order is
substituted for the "fourfold order," on which the "plea for revelation"
was originally founded, it appears that these five categories are
"plants, fishes, birds, mammals, and man," which, Mr. Gladstone affirms,
"are given to us in Genesis in the order of succession in which they are
also given by the latest geological authorities."

I must venture to demur to this statement. I showed, in my previous
paper, that there is no reason to doubt that the term "great sea
monster" (used in Gen. i. 21) includes the most conspicuous of great sea
animals--namely, whales, dolphins, porpoises, manatees, and dugongs; [2]
and, as these are indubitable mammals, it is impossible to affirm that
mammals come after birds, which are said to have been created on the
same day. Moreover, I pointed out that as these Cetacea and Sirenia are
certainly modified land animals, their existence implies the antecedent
existence of land mammals.

Furthermore, I have to remark that the term "fishes," as used,
technically, in zoology, by no means covers all the moving creatures
that have life, which are bidden to "fill the waters in the seas" (Gen.
i. 20-22.) Marine mollusks and crustacea, echinoderms, corals, and
foraminifera are not technically fishes. But they are abundant in the
palaeozoic rocks, ages upon ages older than those in which the first
evidences of true fishes appear. And if, in a geological book, Mr.
Gladstone finds the quite true statement that plants appeared before
fishes, it is only by a complete misunderstanding that he can be led
to imagine it serves his purpose. As a matter of fact, at the present
moment, it is a question whether, on the bare evidence afforded
by fossils, the marine creeping thing or the marine plant has the
seniority. No cautious palaeontologist would express a decided opinion
on the matter. But, if we are to read the pentateuchal statement as
a scientific document (and, in spite of all protests to the contrary,
those who bring it into comparison with science do seek to make a
scientific document of it), then, as it is quite clear that only
terrestrial plants of high organisation are spoken of in verses 11
and 12, no palaeontologist would hesitate to say that, at present, the
records of sea animal life are vastly older than th