in the sense of the pentateuchal writer or not.

I have every respect for the singer of the Song of the Three
Children (whoever he may have been); I desire to cast no shadow
of doubt upon, but, on the contrary, marvel at, the exactness of
Mr. Gladstone's information as to the considerations which
"affected the method of the Mosaic writer"; nor do I venture to
doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these contemptible
reptiles--"a family fallen from greatness" (p. 14), a miserable
decayed aristocracy reduced to mere "skulkers about the earth"
(ibid.)--in consequence, apparently, of difficulties
about the occupation of land arising out of the earth-hunger of
their former serfs, the mammals--into an apologetic argument,
which otherwise would run quite smoothly, is in every way to be
deprecated. Still, the wretched creatures stand there,
importunately demanding notice; and, however different may be
the practice in that contentious atmosphere with which Mr.
Gladstone expresses and laments his familiarity, in the
atmosphere of science it really is of no avail whatever to shut
one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them out of sight under a
tumulus of rhetoric. That is my experience of the "Elysian
regions of Science," wherein it is a pleasure to me to think
that a man of Mr. Gladstone's intimate knowledge of English
life, during the last quarter of a century, believes my
philosophic existence to have been rounded off in
unbroken equanimity.

However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, terrestrial
reptiles may be, the only question which appears to me to be
relevant to my argument is whether these creatures are or are