Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/813

Rh science appears to me to decline to have anything to do with cither; they are as wrong in detail as they are mistaken in principle.

There is another change of position, the value of which is not so apparent to me as it may well seem to be to those who are unfamiliar with the subject under discussion. Mr. Gladstone discards his three groups of "water population," "air population" and "land population," and substitutes for them (1) fishes, (2) birds, (3) mammals, (4) man. Moreover, it is assumed in a note that "the higher or ordinary mammals" alone were known to the "Mosaic writer" (p. 619). No doubt it looks, at first, as if something were gained by this alteration; for, as I have just pointed out, the word "fishes" can be used in two senses, one of which has a deceptive appearance of adjustability to the "Mosaic" account. Then the inconvenient reptiles are banished out of sight; and, finally, the question of the exact meaning of "higher" and "ordinary" in the case of mammals opens up the prospect of a hopeful logomachy. But what is the good of it all in the face of Leviticus on the one hand and of paleontology on the other?

As, in my apprehension, there is not a shadow of justification for the suggestion that when the Pentateuchal writer says "fowl" he excludes bats (which, as we shall see directly, are expressly included under "fowl" in Leviticus), and as I have already shown that he demonstrably includes reptiles, as well as mammals, among the creeping things of the land, I may be permitted to spare my readers further discussion of the "fivefold order." On the whole, it is seen to be rather more inconsistent with Genesis than its fourfold predecessor.

But I have yet a fresh order to face. Mr. Gladstone (p. 624) understands "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 (v. 9 and 10). 2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (v. 11 and 12). 3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes (v. 20). 4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of birds. 5. Another, in the order of beasts (v. 24 and 25). 6. Last of all, man (v. 26 and 27)."

Mr. Gladstone then tries to find the proof of the occurrence of a similar succession in sundry excellent works on geology.

I am really grieved to be obliged to say that this third (or is it fourth?) modification of the foundation of the "plea for Revelation" originally set forth satisfies me as little as any of its predecessors.

For, in the first place, I can not accept the assertion that this order is to be found in Genesis. With respect to No. 3, for example, I hold, as I have already said, that "great sea monsters" includes the Cetacea, in which case mammals (which is what, I suppose, Mr. Gladstone means by "beasts") come in under head No. 3, and not under No. 5.

Again, "fowl" are said in Genesis to be created on the same day as