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successive; that groups of living things, like the giant saurians, which
were once the dominant zoological objects, had their day and have gone,
as we may suppose, for ever. A few very lowly forms, like the
lamp-shells, have persisted almost throughout the history of life on the
earth, but on the whole the picture which we see is one of appearances,
culminations, and disappearances of successive races of living things.
There was a time when Trilobites, crustaceans whose nearest living
representatives are the King-Crabs, first became features of the fauna
of the earth. Then they increased to such an extent as to become the
most prominent feature. Then they declined in importance, disappeared,
and for uncounted ages have existed only as fossils. Thus we conclude
that the creation of species was a progressive affair, just as the
creation of individuals is a successive affair, for every living thing,
coming as it does into existence by the power of the Creator, is His
creation and in a very real sense a special creation. Now we know very
well how living things come into existence to-day; can we form any idea
as to how they originated in the beginning? Milton, in his crude
description in _Paradise Lost_, pictured living things as gradually
rising out of and extricating themselves from the soil.

"The grassy clods now calved, now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brindled mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: the swift stag from underground
Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, up heaved
His vastness."

In this description Milton probably represented the ideas of his day--a
day penetrated with literal interpretation of the Scripture, though it
is well to recall to our minds the fact that not one word or idea of the
above is contained in the Bible. The only suggestion is that the body of
Adam was fashioned from the "slime of the earth," the precise meaning of
which phrase has never been defined by the Church.

Again, we have to say that the Miltonic scheme is not impossible, any
more than any other scheme is impossible, but we may further say that it
is more than improbable, and with every reverence we may add that to us
it does not seem to be specially consonant with the g