er reptiles allied to lizards, occur in the Permian strata. It
is further agreed that the Triassic strata were deposited after these.
Moreover, it is well known that, even if certain footprints are to be
taken as unquestionable evidence of the existence of birds, they are
not known to occur in rocks earlier than the Trias, while indubitable
remains of birds are to be met with only much later. Hence it follows
that natural science does not "affirm" the statement that birds were
made on the fifth day, and "everything that creepeth on the ground" on
the sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order; for, as is shown
by Leviticus, the "Mosaic writer" includes lizards among his "creeping
things."

Perhaps I have given myself superfluous trouble in the preceding
argument, for I find that Mr. Gladstone is willing to assume (he does
not say to admit) that the statement in the text of Genesis as to
reptiles cannot "in all points be sustained" (p. 16). But my position
is that it cannot be sustained in any point, so that, after all, it
has perhaps been as well to go over the evidence again. And then Mr.
Gladstone proceeds as if nothing had happened to tell us that--

There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, the fact
that such a record should have been made at all.

As most peoples have their cosmogonies, this "fact" does not strike me
as having much value.

Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in generalities, it
has placed itself under the severe conditions of a chronological
order reaching from the first _nisus_ of chaotic matter to
the consummated production of a fair and goodly, a furnished and
a peopled world.

This "fact" can be regarded as of value only by ignoring the fact
demonstrated in my previous paper, that natural science does not
confirm the order asserted so far as living things are concerned; and
by upsetting a fact to be brought to light presently, to wit, that, in
regard to the rest of the pentateuchal cosmogony, prudent science has
very little to say one way or the other.

Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light of the
nineteenth century, to draw more and more of countenance from
the best natural philosophy.

I have already questioned the accuracy of this statement, and I do not
observe that mere repetition adds to its value.

And, fourthly, that it has described the successive origins of
the five great categories of pres