new centres; and we know that this process has removed, in early geological periods, many creatures that would have been highly injurious to human interests had they remained. Now the group of species created with man being the latest introduced, we may infer, on geological grounds, that it would have extended itself within the spheres of older zoological and botanical districts, and would have replaced their species, which, in the ordinary operation of natural laws, may have been verging toward extinction. Thus not only man, but the Eden in which he dwelt, with all its animals and plants, would have gradually encroached on the surrounding wilderness, until man's happy and peaceful reign had replaced that of the ferocious beasts that preceded him in dominion, and had extended at least over all the temperate region of the earth. 4. The cursing of the ground for man's sake, on his fall from innocence, would thus consist in the permission given to the predaceous animals and the thorns and the briers of other centres of creation to invade his Eden; or, in his own expulsion, to contend with the animals and plants which were intended to have given way and become extinct before him. Thus the fall of man would produce an arrestment in the progress of the earth in that last great revolution which would have converted it into an Eden; and the anomalies of its present state consist, according to Scripture, in a mixture of the conditions of the tertiary with those of the human period. 5. Though there is good ground for believing that man was to have been exempted from the general law of mortality, we can not infer that any such exemption would have been enjoyed by his companion animals; we only know that he himself would have been free from all annoyance and injury and decay from external causes. We may also conclude that, while Eden was sufficient for his habitation, the remainder of the earth would continue, just as in the earlier tertiary periods, under the dominion of the predaceous mammals, reptiles, and birds. 6. The above views enable us on the one hand to avoid the difficulties that attend the admission of predaceous animals into Eden, and on the other the still more formidable difficulties that attend the attempt to exclude them altogether from the Adamic world. They also illustrate the geological fact that many animals, contemporaneous with man, extend far back into the Tertiary period. These are creatures not belonging to the Edenic centre of creation, but introduced in an earlier part of the sixth day, and now permitted to exist along with man in his fallen state. I have stated these supposed conditions of the Adamic creation briefly, and with as little illustration as possible, that they may connectedly strike the mind of the reader. Each of these statements is in harmony with the Scriptural narrative on the one hand, and with geology on the other; and, taken together, they afford an intelligible history of the introduction of man.