1: There was "evening and morning" of the third day, i.e.,
beginning and _completion_, and also the whole interval of the fourth
day, _before_ the command of the fifth.]

All attempts to make out that this _was_ so, have proved failures. It is
assumed, for instance (and justly so), that life on the globe began with
low vegetable forms; these represented the "grass" of the text, and it
is suggested that the "fruit tree" is represented by the Devonian and
Carboniferous _conifers_. This in itself is a very strained view. It is
recollected that the terms used are not scientific, but for the world at
large; but without confining "fruit tree" to mean only trees having
_edible_ fruit, still the appearance of a few first species of
_conifers_ in the Devonian, can hardly be called an adequate fulfilment
of the requirements of the passage. But even so, myriads of fish and
other animals existed _before_ the Devonian and Carboniferous plant age.

The animal forms that so existed, have therefore to be _ignored_, or are
assumed to have been created without special notice: and it is said that
the Mosaic period of "moving creatures of the deep," fishes and
monsters, only began when the rocks begin to show _great abundance_ of
shells, of fish, and subsequently of huge reptilians which prepared the
way for birds--which gradually make their appearance towards the Trias.

But the Devonian "age of fishes" (Devonian including old red sandstone)
was far too important a period to be thus got rid of; and it is
difficult to understand _why_ the narrative should exclude all the
extensive and beautiful (though often little specialized) orders of
marine life--all the Corals, the Mollusca and Articulata, which had long
abounded--especially some of the Crustaceans, not an unimportant group
of which (_Trilobite_[1]) had also culminated and almost passed away
before the Devonian; to say nothing of the fact that _land_ "creeping
things" (scorpions among _crustacea_, and apparently winged insects) had
occurred.

[Footnote 1: It is remarkable that the Trilobites rapidly culminated, so
that we have the largest and most perfect forms, such as _Paradoxus_,
with the lowest (_Agnostus_) in the same beds in Wales (Etheridge's
"Phillips' Manual," Part II. p. 32).]

It is a special difficulty also, that if _insects_ are included among
the "creeping things" of the _earth_ then various families of the
"land-creation" (sixth day) became represented _before_ th