genesis is too clear and explicit to be misunderstood, in its proper
renderings. It especially emphasizes the remarkable and most extraordinary
statement, at least for the period in which it was written, that all life
comes primordially from the waters and the earth. Note the order in which
the command "to bring forth" was issued:--

1. Let the earth bring forth its vegetation.

2. Let the waters bring forth the fishes, the amphibia, the reptiles, _the
fowl of the air_.

3. Let the earth bring forth the beast, the cattle, every living creature,
and everything that creepeth upon the earth--each after his kind.

4. _Let us make man in our own image_.

And this is the precise order in which the Scientific genesis proceeds,
with all the lithographic pages of nature turned back for its inspection.
Before vegetation there could have been no animal life upon the globe.
This fact is most conclusively proved, not only by geographic and
paleontologic records, but by legitimate induction. From the highly
crystalline, and, for the most part, non-fossiliferous era, far back in
the Laurentian period, down, in the order of time, to the modern or
post-tertiary period, there is one continuous history of
life-manifestations, written upon the stratified rocks, in the order of
the Bible Genesis. Was this mere guess and fancy on the part of the
writer, even to the seemingly improbable element wherein is assigned the
origin of the "fowl of the air?" Bear in mind that nothing was known of
geological distribution at the time this most remarkable genesis was
written. Had there been, it is certain that the careful and painstaking