“It quite agrees with what I have proved in my researches in natural history,” observed Godfrey, “for I have found that each species of animals keeps to itself, and the different species never, under any circumstances, mix in their natural state. For instance, the wild ass will never mate with the zebra, or the zebra with the horse; it is only under the influence of man that these race-distinctions are diverted, and, given the first creation, there follows natural adaptation, selection, and variety, in the same species according to surroundings in consequent succession.” “Just so,” assented Sorrel. “The first vegetable creation, according to scripture, is ‘the herb yielding seed’—or seed-pod—‘and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself’—so that ever afterwards the fruit of the tree produces its own seed and no further ‘creation’ is necessary, it being from that time a question of repetition and evolution. ‘And it was so,’ for vegetation became luxuriant in the extreme, from which reason that period is called the Carboniferous era. “In due time all this wealth of vegetation cleared the atmosphere and brightened the clouds, and when the time was ripe, there followed the next scheme which, as in the case of all the other phases, came slowly, without any line of demarcation, one period being gradually and imperceptibly blended with the next. So that the succeeding phase, the creation of the starry firmament, would also come about slowly; the luxuriant vegetation would clear the sky, and the stars beyond would become visible in consequence. This creation of the stars, therefore, can only mean that those already existing became _visible_ for the first time through the gradually clearing sky—for it is not tenable to suppose, even for a moment, that all the stars and celestial bodies were created for _our_ special benefit; the benefit of pleasure or instruction of the few people on earth who seriously study the science of astronomy, considering that myriads of these stars are millions of years older than Earth is now. Of course, seeing that man was not yet created, this influx of light could only be for the immediate benefit of the animals and vegetation then existing, in order that the world might be prepared for the succeeding life of all forms, and there comes another wonderful creation which may have been sudden. A sun is formed and begins to shine on the Earth, and the moon Luna, probably being already there—for she is older than the Earth, or, at any rate, older in her life—but dark, that is, merely luminous like some of the stars, receives the full blaze of the sunlight also, and our Earth, from its position, is illumined by the reflecting moon. And God made ‘the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also’—thus came the completion, or the formation, of many of the stars, some of which might probably mean certain of our own