ulation, (3) air-population; and it would be unkind to bind down
the reconcilers to this detail when one has parted with so many others
to oblige them.

But even this sublimated essence of the pentateuchal doctrine (if it be
such) remains as discordant with natural science as ever.

It is not true that the species composing any one of the three
populations originated during any one of three successive periods of
time, and not at any other of these.

Undoubtedly, it is in the highest degree probable that animal life
appeared first under aquatic conditions; that terrestrial forms appeared
later, and flying animals only after land animals; but it is, at the
same time, testified by all the evidence we possess, that the great
majority, if not the whole, of the primordial species of each division
have long since died out and have been replaced by a vast succession of
new forms. Hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct as those
which now compose our water, land, and air-populations, have come into
existence and died out again, throughout the aeons of geological time
which separate us from the lower Palaeozoic epoch, when, as I have
pointed out, our present evidence of the existence of such distinct
populations commences. If the species of animals have all been
separately created, then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts
of creative energy have occurred, at intervals, throughout the whole
time recorded by the fossiliferous rocks; and, during the greater part
of that time, the "creation" of the members of the water, land, and
air-populations must have gone on contemporaneously.

If we represent the water, land, and air-populations by _a, b,_ and _c_
respectively, and take vertical succession on the page to indicate
order in time, then the following schemes will roughly shadow forth the
contrast I have been endeavouring to explain:

Genesis (as interpreted by Nature (as interpreted by
Mr. Gladstone). natural science).
_b b b c1 a3 b2
c c c c a2 b1
a a a b a1 b
a a a_

So far as I can see, there is only one resource left for those modern
representatives of Sisyphus, the reconcilers of Genesis with science;
and it has the advantage of being founded on a perfectly legitimate
appeal to our ignorance. It has be