It will now be desirable to notice what occurred, because here the question of _order_ is concerned. I could not avoid a partial statement on this subject at an earlier page, nor would it be quite sufficient simply to refer the reader back to those pages. At the risk of some repetition, I will therefore consider the subject here. It will be observed that on the older interpretation, which passed over the special act of God in _designing_ and _publishing the design,_ and descended at once to the earth to the process of producing the designed forms, this order was matter of great importance. Granting the supporters of this view that the six days are unequal periods often of vast duration, with or without important subdivisions, they are bound to make out that each creation began, and was at any rate well advanced, _before_ the next began. We ought, in fact, to see a period more or less prolonged when the whole of what is indicated in the _plant_ verse was well advanced, _before_ any marine or fresh-water life appeared at all.[1] [Footnote 1: There was "evening and morning" of the third day, i.e., beginning and _completion_, and also the whole interval of the fourth day, _before_ the command of the fifth.] All attempts to make out that this _was_ so, have proved failures. It is assumed, for instance (and justly so), that life on the globe began with low vegetable forms; these represented the "grass" of the text, and it is suggested that the "fruit tree" is represented by the Devonian and Carboniferous _conifers_. This in itself is a very strained view. It is recollected that the terms used are not scientific, but for the world at large; but without confining "fruit tree" to mean only trees having _edible_ fruit, still the appearance of a few first species of _conifers_ in the Devonian, can hardly be called an adequate fulfilment of the requirements of the passage. But even so, myriads of fish and other animals existed _before_ the Devonian and Carboniferous plant age. The animal forms that so existed, have therefore to be _ignored_, or are assumed to have been created without special notice: and it is said that the Mosaic period of "moving creatures of the deep," fishes and monsters, only began when the rocks begin to show _great abundance_ of shells, of fish, and subsequently of huge reptilians which prepared the way for birds--which gradually make their appearance towards the Trias.