to which we have all listened in our childhood, that this hypothesis owes its general wide diffusion as one of the current beliefs of English-speaking people.  If you turn to the seventh book of “Paradise Lost,” you will find there stated the hypothesis to which I refer, which is briefly this:  That this visible universe of ours came into existence at no great distance of time from the present; and that the parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that, on the first of these days, light appeared; that, on the second, the firmament, or sky, separated the waters above, from the waters beneath, the firmament; that, on the third day, the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its appearance; that the fourth day was signalised by the apparition of the sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals originated within the waters; that, on the sixth day, the earth gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of the universe from chaos was finished.  Milton tells us, without the least ambiguity, what a spectator of these marvellous occurrences would have witnessed.  I doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you, but I should like to recall one passage to your minds, in order that I may be justified in what I have said regarding the perfectly concrete, definite, picture of the origin of the animal world which Milton draws.  He says:—­

    “The sixth, and of creation last, arose
    With evening harps and matin, when God said,
    ’Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
    Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
    Each in their kind!’ The earth obeyed, and, straight
    Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
    Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
    Limbed and full-grown.  Out of the ground uprose,
    As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
    In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
    Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked;
    The cattle in the fields and meadows green;
    Those rare and solitary; these in flocks
    Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung. 
    The grassy clods now calved; now half appears
    The tawny lion, pawing to get free
    His hinder parts—­then springs, as broke from bonds,
    And rampant shakes his brinded 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, upheaved
    His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose
    As plants; ambiguous between sea and land,
    The river-horse and scaly crocodile. 
    At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
    Insect or worm.