It is to be remarked that plant and animal always appear in nature as two separate and parallel kingdoms.  It is not that the plant is lower than the animal, so that the highest plant takes on it some of the first characters which mark the lowest animal:  but both start separately from minute and little specialized forms so similar that it is extremely difficult to say which is plant and which is animal.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See this well summarized in Nicholson’s “Manual of Zoology” (sixth edition, 1880), p. 13, et seq.]

All the beginnings of life in either kingdom would therefore be ill-adapted (most of them, at any rate) for preservation in rock-strata.[1]

[Footnote 1:  I think this is quite sufficient, without relying on the evidence of the great quantities of carbon in the earliest (Laurentian, Huronian, &c.) strata in the form of graphite.  It is possible, or even probable, that this may be due to carbon supplied by masses of little specialized Thallophyte and Anophyte vegetation.]

All we know for certain is that vegetable-life was closely coeval with the lowest animal-life, and that it was very long before specialized forms, even of cryptogams, made a great show in the world.

Probability is entirely in favour of the actual priority being in vegetable forms; and more than that is not required.  For the Mosaic narrative, while it places the origin of the vegetable kingdom actually first, lets the fiat for the animal kingdom follow almost immediately.

As to the order of appearance of the plants, I will reserve my remarks for the moment.

(4) “AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHTS IN THE FIRMAMENT OF THE HEAVEN, TO DIVIDE THE DAY FROM THE NIGHT; AND LET THEM BE FOR SIGNS, AND FOR SEASONS, AND FOR DAYS, AND FOR YEARS:  AND LET THEM BE FOR LIGHTS IN THE FIRMAMENT TO GIVE LIGHT ON THE EARTH.”

The sun and the stars, and all the host of heaven, are clearly understood to have been created “in the beginning,” under the general statement of fact which forms the first verse of the narrative.

The 14th verse has always been understood to refer to the establishment of the relations between the earth and the sun, moon, and stars, which have, as a matter of fact, been recognized by all ages and all people ever since.  The writer of the 104th Psalm certainly so understood the passage—­

  “He appointed the moon for seasons;
  The sun knoweth his going down.[1]”

The writer was instructed to use popularly intelligible language, and so the text speaks of the lights as they appear in the sky or firmament.