According to the Miltonic account, the order in which animals
should have made their appearance in the stratified rocks would
be thus: Fishes, including the great whales, and birds;
after them, all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds.
Nothing could be further from the facts as we find them; we know
of not the slightest evidence of the existence of birds before
the Jurassic, or perhaps the Triassic, formation;
while terrestrial animals, as we have just seen, occur in the
Carboniferous rocks.

If there were any harmony between the Miltonic account and the
circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence of
the existence of birds in the Carboniferous, the Devonian, and
the Silurian rocks. I need hardly say that this is not the case,
and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far
later period which I have mentioned.

And again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes and the
great whales, and the like, made their appearance on the fifth
day, we ought to find the remains of these animals in the older
rocks--in those which were deposited before the Carboniferous
epoch. Fishes we do find, in considerable number and variety;
but the great whales are absent, and the fishes are not such as
now live. Not one solitary species of fish now in existence is
to be found in the Devonian or Silurian formations. Hence we are
introduced afresh to the dilemma which I have already placed
before you: either the animals which came into existence on the
fifth day were not such as those which are found at present, are
not the direct and immediate ancestors of those which now exist;
in which case, either fresh creations of which nothing is said,