The water-population of vertebrated animals first appears in the
Upper Silurian.<2> 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 determined 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;