Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/642

624 through a phase of this kind" (ibid.). "The other planets are apparently more or less like the earth in possessing atmospheres and seas." Is there not here a remarkable concurrence with the second great act of the cosmogony?

Plainly, as I suppose it is agreeable to these suppositions that, as vapor gradually passes into water, and the atmosphere is cleared, the full adaptation of sun and moon by visibility for their functions should come in due sequence, as it comes in Gen. i. 14-18.

Pursuing its subject, the Manual proceeds (p. 17): "This consideration leads up to what has been called the nebular hypothesis," which "supposes that, before the stars existed, the materials of which they consist were diffused in the heavens in a state of vapor" (ibid.). The text then proceeds to describe how local centers of condensation might throw off rings, these rings break into planets, and the planets, under conditions of sufficient force, repeat the process, and thus produce satellites like those of Saturn, or like the moon.

I therefore think that, so far as cosmogony is concerned, the effect of Mr. Huxley's paper is not by any means to leave it as it was, but to leave it materially fortified by the Manual of Geology, which I understand to be a standard of authority at the present time.

Turning now to the region of that science, I understand the main statements of Genesis, in successive order of time, but without any measurement of its divisions, to be as follows:

1. A period of land, anterior to all life (verses 9, 10).

2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (verses 11, 12),

3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes (verse 20).

4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of birds.

5. Another, in the order of beasts (verses 24, 25). G. Last of all, man (verses 26, 27).

Here is a chain of six links, attached to a previous chain of three. And I think it not a little remarkable that of this entire succession, the only step directly challenged is that of numbers four and five, which (p. 457) Mr. Huxley is inclined rather to reverse. He admits distinctly the seniority of fishes. How came that seniority to be set down here? He admits as probable upon present knowledge, in the person of Homo sapiens, the juniority of man (p. 455). How came this juniority to be set down here? He proceeds indeed to describe an opposite opinion concerning man as holding exactly the same rank as the one to which he had given an apparent sanction (ibid.). As I do not precisely understand the bearing of the terms he uses, I pass them by, and I shall take the liberty of referring presently to the latest authorities, which he has himself suggested that I should consult. But I add to the questions I have just put this other inquiry. How came the Mosaic writer to place the fishes and the men in their true relative positions not only to one another, and not only to the rest of the animal succession, but in a definite and that a the relation of time to the