I will here interrupt my argument for a moment to say that there is a _certain degree_ of _coincidence_ between the succession of life on the earth as far as it is explained by palaeontological research, and the order of creation stated in Genesis; but that is not concerned with any forced interpretation of the term "day." The coincidence is just near enough to give rise to a desire to identify creative periods with the series shown by the fossil-bearing rocks; while it is attended with just enough of difference to furnish matter for controversy, and to expose the interpreters to be cut up. But to return. Nothing, I submit, is gained by getting _day_ to mean period. Let us put the matter quite squarely. Let us take day to mean period, and let us take all the verses to mean the _process_ of _producing_ on earth the various life-forms. In order to come at once to the point, let us begin with the time when the dry land and the waters are separate. At that moment, there is nothing said (or implied) about life already having begun in either water or on dry land. God commanded plants to grow; consequently during that _whole period_ nothing but plants, and that of all the kinds and classes mentioned, should appear either in water or on land. That period being done, then came the command for water animals, fish and great monsters, and also birds. We ought, accordingly, to come next upon a whole period in which no trace of anything but plants and these animals can be found; and lastly, we ought to find the period of mammalia, smaller reptiles, _amphibia_ and insects (creeping things). That is the fair and plain result of what comes of supposing the terms "let there be," &c., to mean _production on earth of the thing's themselves_, and that the days are long _periods_. All overlapping of the periods is inadmissible. All meaning is taken away, if we allow of fish (e.g.) appearing in the middle of our first period; for God did not command another day's work till after the first was completed--"there was evening and there was morning, a first day" (period), &c. No; to suit the text so interpreted, we must have a full _period_ of plants with no fish; then a period of both but no insects, no creeping things, no animals; and so on. Now it is quite idle to contend any longer, that any such state of things ever existed. If we pass over the long series of the most ancient strata in which doubtful forms of obscure elementary plant and animal life appear _almost_ together, we shall come to shell-fish, and crustaceans fully established in the water, and scorpions, and some insects even on land, _before_ plants made any great show. For the Carboniferous--_the_ age of acrogen plants, _par excellence_--does not occur till after swarms of _Trilobite_ Crustaceans had filled the sea and passed away, and after the Devonian fish-age had nearly passed away; and so on throughout.