In the great Carboniferous formation,[69] whence America derives so vast a proportion of her actual and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which have been formed from the vegetation of that period, we find abundant evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals.  They have been described, not only by European but by your own naturalists.  There are to be found numerous insects allied to our cockroaches.  There are to be found spiders and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to existing scorpions that it requires the practiced eye of the naturalist to distinguish them.  Inasmuch as these animals can be proved to have been alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is perfectly clear that, if the Miltonic account is to be accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending from the middle of the Paleozoic formations to the uppermost members of the series, must belong to the day which is termed by Milton the sixth.  But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic animals took their origin upon the fifth day, and not before; hence, all formations in which remains of aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which therefore testify that such animals lived at the time when these formations were in course of deposition, must have been deposited during or since the period which Milton speaks of as the fifth.  But there is absolutely no fossiliferous formation in which the remains of aquatic animals are absent.  The oldest fossils in the Silurian rocks[70] are exuviae of marine animals; and if the view which is entertained by Principal Dawson and Dr. Carpenter respecting the nature of the eozooen be well founded, aquatic animals existed at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of the coal as the coal is from us; inasmuch as the eozooen is met with in those Laurentian strata which lie at the bottom of the series of stratified rocks.  Hence it follows, plainly enough, that the whole series of stratified rocks, if they are to be brought into harmony with Milton, must be referred to the fifth and sixth days, and that we cannot hope to find the slightest trace of the products of the earlier days in the geological record.  When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story which Milton tells.  The whole series of fossiliferous stratified rocks must be referred to the last two days; and neither the Carboniferous, nor any other, formation can afford evidence of the work of the third day.

Not only is there this objection to any attempt to establish a harmony between the Miltonic account and the facts recorded in the fossiliferous rocks, but there is a further difficulty.  According to the Miltonic account, the order in which animals should have made their appearance in the stratified rocks would be this:  Fishes, including the great whales, and birds; after them, all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds.