And that space circumscribed by the sweep of the lower jaw which it took, in the Russian specimen, a hyoid plate twenty-four inches in breadth to fill, could be filled in the two-and-a-half-feet cod by a plate whose breadth equalled but an inch and a half. Thus, in the not unimportant circumstance of size, the most ancient Ganoids yet known, instead of taking their places, agreeably to the demands of the development hypothesis, among the sprats, sticklebacks, and minnows of their class, took their place among its huge basking sharks, gigantic sturgeons, and bulky sword-fishes. They were giants, not dwarfs. [Illustration: Fig. 46. HYOID PLATE OF RUSSIAN ASTEROLEPIS. (One twelfth the natural size, linear.)] But what of their organization? Were they fishes low or high in the scale? On this head we can, of course, determine merely by the analogies which their structure exhibits to that of fishes of the existing period; and these point in three several directions;—in two of the number, directly on genera of the high Ganoid order; and in the third, on the still higher Placoids and Enaliosaurs. No trace of vertebræ has yet been found; and so we infer—lodging, however, a precautionary protest, as the evidence is purely negative, and therefore it some degree inconclusive—that the vertebral column of the _Asterolepis_ was, like that of the sturgeon, cartilaginous. Respecting its external covering, we positively know, as has been already shown, that, like the _Lepidosteus_ of America and the _Polypterus_ of the Nile, it was composed of strong plates and scales of solid bone; and, regarding its dentition, that, as in these last genera, and even more decidedly than in these, it was of the mixed ichthyic-reptilian character,—an outer row of thickly-set fish-teeth being backed by an inner row of thinly-set reptile-teeth. And its form of coprolite indicates the spiral disposition of intestine common to the Rays and Sharks of the existing period, and of the Ichthyosauri of the Secondary ages. Instead of being, as the development hypothesis would require, a fish low in its organization, it seems to have ranged on the level of the highest ichthyic-reptilian families ever called into existence. Had an intelligent being, ignorant of what was going on upon earth during the week of creation, visited Eden on the morning of the sixth day, he would have found in it many of the inferior animals, but no trace of man. Had he returned again in the evening, he would have seen, installed in the office of keepers of the garden, and ruling with no tyrant sway as the humble monarchs of its brute inhabitants, two mature human creatures, perfect in their organization, and arrived at the full stature of their race. The entire evidence regarding them, in the absence of all such information as that imparted to Adam by Milton’s angel, would amount simply to this, that in the morning man _was not_, and that in the evening he _was_. There,