consideration which perhaps illustrates the order of the plants in the narrative. It may be objected to the above views that, however accordant with chemical and physiological probabilities, they do not harmonize with the facts of geology; since the earliest fossiliferous formations contain almost exclusively the remains of animals, which must therefore have preceded, or at least been coeval with, the earliest forms of terrestrial vegetation. This objection is founded on well-ascertained facts, but facts which may have no connection with the third day of creation when regarded as a long period. The oldest geological formations are of marine origin, and contain remains of marine animals, with those of plants supposed to be allied to the existing algae or sea-weeds. Geology can not, however, assure us either that no land plants existed contemporaneously with these earliest animals, or that no land flora preceded them. These oldest fossiliferous rocks may mark the commencement of animal life, but they testify nothing as to the existence or non-existence of a previous period of vegetation alone. Farther, the rocks which contain the oldest remains of life exist as far as yet known in a condition so highly metamorphic as almost to preclude the possibility of their containing any distinguishable vegetable fossils; yet they contain vast deposits of carbon in the form of graphite, and if this, like more modern coaly matter, was accumulated by vegetable growth, it must indicate an exuberance of plants in these earliest geological periods, but of plants as yet altogether unknown to us. It is possible, therefore, that in these Eozoic rocks we may have remnants of the formations of the third Mosaic day; and if we should ever be so fortunate as to find any portion of them containing vegetable fossils, and these of species differing from any hitherto known, either in a fossil state or recent, and rising higher, in elevation and complexity of type, than the flora of the succeeding Silurian and Carboniferous eras, we may then suppose that we have penetrated to the monuments of this third creative aeon. The only other alternative by which these verses can be reconciled with geology is that adopted by the late Hugh Miller, who supposes that the plants of the third day are those of the Carboniferous period; but, besides the apparent anachronism involved in this, we now know that the coal flora consisted mainly of cryptogams allied to ferns and club-mosses, and of gymnosperms allied to the pines and cycads, the higher orders of plants being almost entirely wanting. For these reasons we are shut up to the conclusion that this flora of the third day must have its place before the Palaeozoic period of geology.