CHAPTER VII. THE sacred historian goes on to his Fifth Article, and relates: 66 "And GOD said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open fir"mament of heaven. 66 66 66 66 66 "And GOD created GREAT WHALES, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after its kind. And GoD saw that it was good. "And GOD blessed them, saying: Be fruitful "and multiply, and FILL THE WATERS IN THE SEAS; and let fowl multiply in the earth. 66 "And the evening and the morning were the 66 FIFTH DAY." The word ", which our version renders bring forth abundantly," is rendered by the Greek interpreters, eşayayero, which simply expresses "bring forth," without the qualification of 6.6 abundantly." The same qualification is absent also in the Latin version of the Chaldee paraphrase. Yet, the Hebrew verb implies abundance; its proper sense being that of scaturivit, i. e. progenuit abundè, as it is rendered by Castell; i. e. to breed, or produce abundantly. 66 66 In this article is related, the first formation of animal matter by the immediate act of Almighty Power, i. e. by Creation: a mode of formation, which appears to constitute the great tormentum of the mineral geology; from the constraint of which, it is ever labouring to extricate its science; but from which, nevertheless, it can never emancipate it. This amazing operation, it sometimes states thus: au bout d'un certain tems, ce liquide fut peuplé d'animaux-at the end of a "certain time, this (chemical) liquid was peopled “with animals," it does not tell us how, but observes, "c'est un trop grand sujet—this is too "great a subject to treat summarily," in order to maintain its spurious distinction between the MODES of mineral and of animal first formations. Yet, the subject is no greater in the one case than in the other, being exactly commensurate in both. Sometimes it shelters itself, from the assertion of creation, in the allegation of development; and propounds, with anodyne obscurity, "the develop"ment of organic life on the globe3." Nor does it seem to be so much amazed that the globe was peopled at all, as that it was not peopled sooner : What is astonishing, it says, and not less certain, is, that life has not always existed on the 66 1 DE LUC, Lett. Geol. p. 77. 3 HUMBOLDT, Superp. of Rocks, p. 28, 30, 46. 2 Ibid. p. 220. L "globe1." It is difficult, to understand the ground of its astonishment; for, if it supposes the earth to have had a beginning, the production of animals on the fifth day of its formation, was early enough to have satisfied it. The same immediate operation of God, which, on the first day, gave perfect existence to His mineral system, and, on the third day, to His vegetable system; gave perfect existence, on this fifth day, to that first created part of His animal system, which comprehended every kind of marine and winged animal, in all the individuals pertaining to its first formation. These were formed in full maturity of structure, in all their component parts, by a mode disclaiming all secondary operation. And, though the bones of the first "whales" unquestionably bore the appearance of an ossifying process, as the textures of the first rock and of the first tree severally bore the appearances of a crystallising and of a lignifying process, yet, that appearance was no indication to reason that they were produced by such a process; because, reason perceives, that they acquired their ossified substance and phenomena before any process of ossification had begun to take place. Thus, marine animals of every kind, from the largest to the minutest, were produced "in abun"dance" in the sea-bed into which the general 66 1 CUVIER, Disc. Prél. p. 9.-Th. § 6. " Ce qui étonne, et ce qui n'est pas moins certain, c'est que la vie n'a pas toujours existé sur le globe." mass of the waters had been drawn from off the portion of the globe invested with vegetation ; which sea-bed, had been formed by the disruption and subsidence of the other portion of the globe. Let us, therefore, carry our thoughts again into the structure of that bed, and into its apparently disordered and ruinous depths and recesses; I say apparently disordered, because, the circumstances of its mysterious alteration were as much directed to final purposes, by the Divine Wisdom, as the regularity of its first formation. The mineral materials, which retained their primitive order and position in the undisturbed dry land, were here fractured, severed, dispersed, and in various ways disturbed, and the soils, which had at first rested on their rocky bases, were necessarily displaced by the rupture of those bases; and, being precipitated into the new profundity, together with the innumerable fragments of the broken rocks, formed the slimy or the shingly bottom of the new sea. On that bottom, and in all the varieties of its parts, whether in its lowest depths or upon the submerged masses which lay upon it, marine matter of every kind, vegetable and animal, was produced in abundance, with the power of perpetual reproduction; and it continued to increase in quantity, in a multiple ratio, during a succession of many ages. This is a FACT, of fundamental concernment to TRUE GEOLOGY; and it will therefore behove the reader to engrave it deeply, and to retain it fixedly in his mind, until the |