y,
of difficulties about the occupation of land arising out of the
earth-hunger of their former serfs, the mammals--into an apologetic
argument, which otherwise would run quite smoothly, is in every way to
be deprecated. Still, the wretched creatures stand there, importunately
demanding notice; and, however different may be the practice in that
contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Gladstone expresses and laments
his familiarity, in the atmosphere of science it really is of no avail
whatever to shut one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them out of
sight under a tumulus of rhetoric. That is my experience of the "Elysian
regions of Science," wherein it is a pleasure to me to think that a man
of Mr. Gladstone's intimate knowledge of English life, during the last
quarter of a century, believes my philosophic existence to have been
rounded off in unbroken equanimity.

However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, terrestrial reptiles may
be, the only question which appears to me to be relevant to my
argument is whether these creatures are or are not comprised under the
denomination of "everything that creepeth upon the ground."

Mr. Gladstone speaks of the author of the first chapter of Genesis as
"the Mosaic writer"; I suppose, therefore, that he will admit that it
is equally proper to speak of the author of Leviticus as the "Mosaic
writer." Whether such a phrase would be used by any one who had an
adequate conception of the assured results of modern Biblical criticism
is another matter; but, at any rate, it cannot be denied that Leviticus
has as much claim to Mosaic authorship as Genesis. Therefore, if one
wants to know the sense of a phrase used in Genesis, it will be well
to see what Leviticus has to say on the matter. Hence, I commend
the following extract from the eleventh chapter of Leviticus to Mr.
Gladstone's serious attention:--

And these are they which are unclean unto you among the creeping
things that creep upon the earth: the weasel, and the mouse, and
the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land
crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the chameleon. These are
they which are unclean to you among all that creep (v. 29-3l).

The merest Sunday-school exegesis therefore suffices to prove that when
the "Mosaic writer" in Genesis i. 24 speaks of "creeping things," he
means to include lizards among them.

This being so, it is agreed, on all hands, that terrestrial lizards,
and oth