[Footnote 2: As a matter of fact, in the one case, if the writer's knowledge were of any importance, it is almost certain that he did _not_ mean _cetacean_ or _sirenian_. In the other case it is impossible to say whether he thought "bats" were included or not. It is not in the nature of things that the writer could ever have seen or even heard of a manatee or a dugong; nor is it likely that he had been a sea-farer, or could have seen any Mediterranean cetacean. As far as his own knowledge went, he probably had but a very confused idea. And if we refer to the poetic description in Psalm civ. 25, 26, we find "leviathan," though distinctly a sea creature, still one of which the writer had only a vague traditional idea, certainly not a _known_ Mediterranean dolphin, for in Job xli. the same term is applied to the crocodile.] We have every right, then, to say that the "tannînîm" of the text may be taken to refer to that great and remarkable age of Saurians which is not only of very great importance in itself, but becomes doubly so when we see its connection backward with the fishes, and forward through the Pterodactyles to Odontoformae (_Apatornis_ and _Icthyornis_) and modern winged birds (_Hesperonis_ for the Penguins); and through the Dinosaurs[1] with the Saurornithes, with the _Dinornis_ and the struthious birds; and through the Theriodonts with the mammalian _carnivora_. [Footnote 1: And perhaps the pachydermatous mammals (Nicholson, "Zoology," p. 566).] In that case the sequence of the two groups, plants and aquatic animal-forms, is explained. They come almost together--plants being probably actually the first, and mollusca, fishes, and saurians.