A few words as to the terms used in describing the contents of each group, may be added.  It is obvious that the terms are intended to be exhaustive of certain main groups which are described sufficiently, without being cast in a form which would have been incompatible with the use (at the time) of a human agent as the medium of the recorded Revelation.

(1) “Vegetation” (of an indefinite character, but not bearing seed), plants bearing seed, trees bearing fruit with the seed in it—­certainly exhaust the entire range of plant-life.

(2) Moving creatures that live (and fish are afterwards expressly mentioned) and great monsters (tann[i=]n[i=]m), cover the entire field of life up to Reptilia as far as these are aquatic forms.

(3) The terms used for the third group are also obviously exhaustive—­the separate mention of the cattle and the beast (Carnivora and Ungulates) is a form which is invariably noticed throughout the Old and New Testaments.  The “creeping things” would include all minor forms, all land reptiles not described above as the “tann[i=]n[i=]m,” and insects.

And it is remarkable that the tortoises, the snakes, and, the more modern forms of crocodile and lizard, and the amphibia and higher insects, are all cainozoic—­some of them were preceded by more or less transitory representatives, e.g., the Carboniferous Eosaurus and Permian Protosaurus the ancient Labyrinthodons and Urodelas, Chelonians and the amphicaelian crocodiles.  Snakes have no palaeozoic representative.

Land insects, as might naturally be expected, go back to the times when land vegetation was sufficiently established, and appear gradually all along the line from the Silurian onwards.  The modern types, however, are Tertiary.

The succession, we observe, may be illustrated by the resemblance of a number of arrows shot rapidly one after the other in so many parallel courses:  all would soon be moving nearly together.

Plant-life, the subject of the first Divine designing, has, as far as we can reasonably say, the start.  According to known laws it appears in elementary and undeveloped forms, and gradually progresses.  One group (Cryptogams) reaches a magnificent development and begins to die away in point of grandeur, though still abundantly exemplified.  Phanerogamic plants in their lowest groups of gymnosperm exogens then begin to appear in the Devonian conifers, gradually followed by cycads.  And it is not till Cainozoic times that we have the endogenous grasses and palms and angiospermous exogens.