The hypothesis of long periods does not require us to assume that Moses notices all the animals and plants that have ever lived, but on the contrary that he informs us only of the _first appearance_ of each great natural type in the animal and vegetable kingdoms; just as he informs us of the first appearance of dry land on the third day, but says nothing of the changes which it underwent on subsequent days. Thus plants were created on the third day, and though they may have been several times destroyed and renewed as to genera and species, we infer that they continued to exist in all the succeeding days, though the inspired historian does not inform us of the fact. So also many tribes of animals were created in the early part of the fifth day, and it is quite unnecessary for us to be informed that these tribes continued to exist through the sixth day. If the days were long periods, the inspired writer could not have adopted any other course, unless he had been instructed to write a treatise on Palaeontology, and to describe the fauna and flora of each successive period with their characteristic differences. 3. "Though there is a general resemblance between the order of creation as described in Genesis and by geology, yet when we look at the details of the creation of the organic world, as required by this hypothesis, we find manifest discrepancy. Thus the Bible represents plants only to have been created on the third day, and animals not till the fifth; and hence at least the lower half of the fossiliferous rocks ought to contain nothing but vegetables. Whereas in fact the lower half of these rocks, all below the carboniferous, although abounding in animals, contain scarcely any plants, and these in the lowest strata fucoids or sea-weeds. But the Mosaic account evidently describes flowering and seed-bearing plants, not flowerless and seedless algae. Again, reptiles are described in Genesis as created on the fifth day; but reptilia and batrachians existed as early as the time when the lower carboniferous and even old red sandstone were in course of deposition, as their tracks on those rocks in Nova Scotia and Pennsylvania evince.[56] In short, if we maintain that Moses describes fossils as well as living species, we find discrepancy instead of correspondence between his order of creation and that of geology." In this objection it is assumed that the geological history of the earth goes back to the third day of creation, or, in other words, to the dawn of organic life. None of the greater authorities in geology would, however, now venture to make such an assertion, and the progress of geology is rapidly making the contrary more and more probable. The fact is that, on the supposition that the days of creation are long periods, the whole series of the fossiliferous rocks belongs to the fifth and sixth days; and that for the early plant creation of the third day, and the great physical changes of the