water_
populations respectively appear for the first time; and in consequence
of the ambiguity about the meaning of "fowl," I have separately
indicated the first appearance of bats, birds, flying reptiles, and
flying insects. It will be observed that, if "fowl" means only "bird,"
or at most flying vertebrate, then the first certain evidence of the
latter, in the Jurassic epoch, is posterior to the first appearance
of truly terrestrial _Amphibia,_ and possibly of true reptiles, in the
Carboniferous epoch (Middle Palaeozoic) by a prodigious interval of
time.

The water-population of vertebrated animals first appears in the Upper
Silurian. [2] Therefore, if we found ourselves on vertebrated animals
and take "fowl" to mean birds only, or, at most, flying vertebrates,
natural science says that the order of succession was water, land, and
air-population, and not--as Mr. Gladstone, founding himself on Genesis,
says--water, air, land-population. If a chronicler of Greece affirmed
that the age of Alexander preceded that of Pericles and immediately
succeeded that of the Trojan war, Mr. Gladstone would hardly say that
this order is "understood to have been so affirmed by historical science
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact."
Yet natural science "affirms" his "fourfold order" to exactly the same
extent--neither more nor less.

Suppose, however, that "fowl" is to be taken to include flying insects.
In that case, the first appearance of an air-population must be shifted
back for long ages, recent discovery having shown that they occur in
rocks of Silurian age. Hence there might still have been hope for the
fourfold order, were it not that the fates unkindly determined
that scorpions--"creeping things that creep on the earth" _par
excellence--_turned up in Silurian strata nearly at the same time. So
that, if the word in the original Hebrew translated "fowl" should really
after all mean "cockroach"--and I have great faith in the elasticity
of that tongue in the hands of Biblical exegetes--the order primarily
suggested by the existing evidence--

2. Land and air-population;
1. Water-population;

and Mr. Gladstone's order--

3. Land-population;
2. Air-population;
1. Water-population;

can by no means be made to coincide. As a matter of fact, then,
the statement so confidently put forward turns out to be devoid of
foundation and in direct contradiction of the evidence