An increasing number of bones and other relics of animal species, that exist no longer, were dug out of the earth. In South America the skeleton was found of a giant-sloth, the megatherium, the remains of a kind of animal, larger than the elephant, that no traveller could find living in the country. The famous mammoth-corpse came to light in the ice of Siberia; an entirely strange elephant with curved tusks and a red woolly coat. Ichthyosauri were found in the rocks in England, and so on. All these “extinct” species had to be named and arranged in the system. A special scientific indication was put on them, which means “extinct.” But this was not enough for thought—which cannot be “entirely dispensed with,” as some one well said, even in exact science. Where did these extinct species come from? What is their relation to the Creator? Were they created long ago in Paradise with the others, and afterwards conveyed in the ark, only to disappear in the course of time? And what was the cause of their disappearance? Must we conclude that part of what Adam saw was not available for Linné and his pupils? These four remains, a few bones here and there, do not tell us much about them. Therefore, species may perish: many of them have perished. There was something new in this, something that obscured the clear lines of earlier science. However, a way of escape was found. It was claimed that these grotesque monsters—ichthyosauri, megatheria, mammoths, &c.—represent an earlier creation, with which Adam had nothing to do. Cuvier developed the theory in his grandiose way in 1812. Before the creation of the animal and plant species that Adam found in Paradise there was a long series of periods in the history of the earth, each of which had its own animal and plant population. It was in one of these periods that the forests grew which we find fossilised in our coal. In another the ichthyosauri, gigantic lizards, filled the ocean. In a third the hideous megatherium dragged along its huge frame, and so on. It is true that there is nothing in the Bible about these ancient and extinct periods; but the Mosaic verses move quickly—they press on to come to man. The repeated creations of the animal and plant worlds are summed up in a single one. We must read something between the lines.