od has said "Let the earth bring forth grass, &c.", in the next
verse it is positively recorded that the earth _did_ bring forth grass,
&c.

I of course admit all this, but it is in no way opposed to my
suggestion.

The _commencement_ of the _result_ probably, if not necessarily,
followed immediately on the issue of the finished command, viz., the
promulgation of the forms to be obtained and the processes to be
followed. The _whole_ result did not become accomplished then and there,
in the time mentioned, or exactly in the order mentioned: we know that
for a fact. Take, for example, the case of _vegetation_. Here the
author, in terms at once precise and universally intelligible, speaks of
"vegetation[1]" (grass of the A.V.), "herb yielding seed," and "trees
yielding fruit," thereby exhaustively enumerating the members of the
vegetable kingdom.

[Footnote 1: Nothing more is meant by the Hebrew "_deshe_." The true
"grasses" (_graminea_),--cereals, bamboos, &c., are certainly not
intended, for these are all conspicuously flowering plants, "herbs
yielding seed," and therefore coming under the second plainly defined
group. But the general term "sproutage" or "vegetation" is just adapted
to signify the mass of cryptogamic plant-life, the mosses, lichens,
algae, and then ferns, &c., which evidently formed the first stage of
plant-life on the globe.]

Now, as a matter of fact, there was no one long (or short) period
during which the whole of this command was realized, _before_ the next
creative act occurred.

At first _algae_ and low forms of vegetable life appeared; and doubtless
we have lost myriads upon myriads of such lower forms of plant-life in
the early strata, because such forms were ill calculated for
fossil-preservation, owing to the absence of woody fibre, silicious
casing, or hard fruit or seed vessels. But when we first have a marked
accumulation of specialized plant-life in the coal measures (Upper
Carboniferous), it is still only of cryptogams--ferns and great club
mosses. A beginning of true seed-bearing plants (Gymnosperm exogens) had
been made with the _conifers_ of the Devonian strata; but true
_grasses_, and the other orders of phanerogamic plants and arboreous
vegetation, do not appear till the tertiary rocks were deposited, very
long after the age of fish and great reptiles had culminated, and the
inauguration of the bird age and the mammalian age had taken place.

Looking only to the abundant, p