," though
distinctly a sea creature, still one of which the writer had only a
vague traditional idea, certainly not a _known_ Mediterranean dolphin,
for in Job xli. the same term is applied to the crocodile.]

We have every right, then, to say that the "tanninim" of the text may be
taken to refer to that great and remarkable age of Saurians which is not
only of very great importance in itself, but becomes doubly so when we
see its connection backward with the fishes, and forward through the
Pterodactyles to Odontoformae (_Apatornis_ and _Icthyornis_) and modern
winged birds (_Hesperonis_ for the Penguins); and through the
Dinosaurs[1] with the Saurornithes, with the _Dinornis_ and the
struthious birds; and through the Theriodonts with the mammalian
_carnivora_.

[Footnote 1: And perhaps the pachydermatous mammals (Nicholson,
"Zoology," p. 566).]

In that case the sequence of the two groups, plants and aquatic
animal-forms, is explained. They come almost together--plants being
probably actually the first, and mollusca, fishes, and saurians.

There is, further, no real dispute that the Saurians led up to the Aves,
and that the third group (of mammals) follows all the members of the
second group. The earliest known mammal (_microlestes_) is an isolated
forerunner of not very certain location, the real bulk of the mammalian
orders beginning in the Eocene. Seeing, too, how very closely one
Creative command is recorded to have followed on the other, it is not in
any way against the narrative that some land forms of crustaceans and
insects (and possibly others) began to appear at an early stage, when
the vegetable and water-animal forms had only progressed as far as the
Silurian and Devonian ages. Nor should we wonder if mammalian forms had
occurred earlier. I mention this because of the evident gap in the
geologic record between the Cretaceous and the Eocene, and because in
the article of December, 1885 (and elsewhere), Professor Huxley has used
language which suggests that mammals may have existed of which the rocks
give no sign. E.g. (p. 855): "The organization of the bat, bird, or
pterodactyle, presupposes that of a terrestrial quadruped ... and is
intelligible only as an extreme modification of the organization of a
terrestrial _mammal or_ reptile." The italics are of course mine. And
again (p. 855), "I am not aware that any competent judge would hesitate
to admit that the organization of these animals (whales, dugo