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 Palæozoic) by a prodigious interval of time.
The water-population of vertebrated animals first appears in the Upper Silurian. 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 deter-mined 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 at present at our disposal.[1]
- ↑ It may be objected that I have not put the case fairly, inasmuch as the solitary insect's wing which was discovered twelve months ago in Silurian rocks, and which is, at present, the sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian epoch, came from strata of Middle Silurian age, and is therefore older than the scorpions which, within the last two years, have been found in Upper Silurian strata in Sweden, Britain, and the United States. But no one who comprehends the nature of the evidence afforded by fossil remains would venture to say that the non-discovery of scorpions in the Middle Silurian strata, up to this time, affords any more ground for supposing that they did not exist, than the non-discovery of flying insects in the Upper Silurian strata, up to this time, throws any doubt on
