We ought, in fact, to see a
period more or less prolonged when the whole of what is indicated in the
_plant_ verse was well advanced, _before_ any marine or fresh-water life
appeared at all.[1]
[Footnote 1: There was "evening and morning" of the third day, i.e.,
beginning and _completion_, and also the whole interval of the fourth
day, _before_ the command of the fifth.]
All attempts to make out that this _was_ so, have proved failures. It is
assumed, for instance (and justly so), that life on the globe began with
low vegetable forms; these represented the "grass" of the text, and it
is suggested that the "fruit tree" is represented by the Devonian and
Carboniferous _conifers_. This in itself is a very strained view. It is
recollected that the terms used are not scientific, but for the world at
large; but without confining "fruit tree" to mean only trees having
_edible_ fruit, still the appearance of a few first species of
_conifers_ in the Devonian, can hardly be called an adequate fulfilment
of the requirements of the passage. But even so, myriads of fish and
other animals existed _before_ the Devonian and Carboniferous plant age.
The animal forms that so existed, have therefore to be _ignored_, or are
assumed to have been created without special notice: and it is said that
the Mosaic period of "moving creatures of the deep," fishes and
monsters, only began when the rocks begin to show _great abundance_ of
shells, of fish, and subsequently of huge reptilians which prepared the
way for birds--which gradually make their appearance towards the Trias.
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