5. The expression of the idea of life in the lowest plants, since it was in type and effect the creation of the vegetable kingdom, is next described in _verse 11_ as a bringing into existence of the characteristic forms of that kingdom. This precedes all mention of animal life, since the vegetable kingdom is the natural basis of the animal. If it be said that our earliest fossils are animal, we reply that the earliest vegetable forms, the _algæ_, were easily dissolved, and might as easily disappear; that graphite and bog-iron ore, appearing lower down than any animal remains, are the result of preceding vegetation; that animal forms, whenever and wherever existing, must subsist upon and presuppose the vegetable. The Eozoön is of necessity preceded by the Eophyte. If it be said that fruit-trees could not have been created on the third day, we reply that since the creation of the vegetable kingdom was to be described at one stroke and no mention of it was to be made subsequently, this is the proper place to introduce it and to mention its main characteristic forms. See Bible Commentary, 1:36; LeConte, Elements of Geology, 136, 285. 6. The vapors which have hitherto shrouded the planet are now cleared away as preliminary to the introduction of life in its higher animal forms. The consequent appearance of solar light is described in _verses 16_ and _17_ as a making of the sun, moon, and stars, and a giving of them as luminaries to the earth. Compare _Gen. 9:13_—“_I do set my bow in the cloud._” As the rainbow had existed in nature before, but was now appointed to serve a peculiar purpose, so in the record of creation sun, moon and stars, which existed before, were appointed as visible lights for the earth,—and that for the reason that the earth was no longer self-luminous, and the light of the sun struggling through the earth’s encompassing clouds was not sufficient for the higher forms of life which were to come.