as we find
them. As a matter of fact we know of not the slightest evidence of the
existence of birds before the jurassic and perhaps the triassic
formations. If there were any parallel between the Miltonic account and
the circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence in the
devonian, the silurian, and carboniferous rocks. I need not tell you
that this is not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes its
appearance until the far later period which I have mentioned. And again,
if it be true that all varieties of fishes, and the great whales and the
like, made their appearance on the fifth day, then we ought to find the
remains of these things in the older rocks--in those which preceded the
carboniferous epoch. Fishes, it is true, we find, and numerous ones; but
the great whales are absent, and the fishes are not such as now live.
Not one solitary species of fish now in existence is to be found there,
and hence you are introduced again to the difficulty, to the dilemma,
that either the creatures that were created then, which came into
existence the sixth day, were not those which are found at present, or
are not the direct and immediate predecessors of those which now exist;
but in that case you must either have had a fresh species of which
nothing has been said, or else the whole story must be given up as
absolutely devoid of any circumstantial evidence."

It is for these and many other reasons that I feel bound to omit the
Mosaic account, no matter how near some portions of it coincide with the
facts the earth has opened out to the scientist.

KANT'S COSMOGONY.

It is maintained by Kant's Cosmogony that every substance, be it solid
or liquid, constituting the entire universe, was, inconceivable ages
ago, in their homogeneous gaseous or nebulous condition. Owing to an
impulse being given to the nebulous mass, it acquired a rotary movement,
which divided the nebulous mass up into a number of masses which, owing
to the rotation, acquired greater density than the remaining gaseous
mass, and then acted on the latter as central points of attraction. Our
solar system was thus a gigantic gaseous or nebulous ball, all the
particles of which revolved around a common central point--the solar
nucleus. This nebulous ball assumed by its continual rotation a more or
less flattened spheroidal form. By the continual revolution of this
mass, under the influence of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, a
circular n