6. Pursuing this regular progression from the lower to the
higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us
the work of the sixth "day," which supplies the land-population,
air and water having been already supplied (pp. 695, 696).


The gloss to which I refer is the assumption that the "air-
population" forms a term in the order of progression from lower
to higher, from simple to complex--the place of which lies
between the water-population below and the land-population
above--and I speak of it as a "gloss," because the pentateuchal
writer is nowise responsible for it.

But it is not true that the air-population, as a whole, is
"lower" or less "complex" than the land-population. On the
contrary, every beginner in the study of animal morphology is
aware that the organisation of a bat, of a bird, or of a
pterodactyle presupposes that of a terrestrial quadruped; and
that it is intelligible only as an extreme modification of the
organisation of a terrestrial mammal or reptile. In the same way
winged insects (if they are to be counted among the
"air-population") presuppose insects which were wingless, and,
therefore, as "creeping things," were part of the land-
population. Thus theory is as much opposed as observation to the
admission that natural science endorses the succession of animal
life which Mr. Gladstone finds in Genesis. On the contrary, a
good many representatives of natural science would be prepared
to say, on theoretical grounds alone, that it is incredible that
the "air-population" should have appeared before the
"land-population"--and that, if this assertion is to be found in