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.  Nothing could be further from the facts as we find them; we know of not the slightest evidence of the existence of birds before the Jurassic, or perhaps the Triassic, formation; while terrestrial animals, as we have just seen, occur in the Carboniferous rocks.

If there were any harmony between the Miltonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence of the existence of birds in the Carboniferous, the Devonian, and the Silurian rocks.  I need hardly say that this is not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far later period which I have mentioned.

And again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes and the great whales, and the like, made their appearance on the fifth day, we ought to find the remains of these animals in the older rocks—­in those which were deposited before the Carboniferous epoch.  Fishes we do find, in considerable number and variety; but the great whales are absent, and the fishes are not such as now live.  Not one solitary species of fish now in existence is to be found in the Devonian or Silurian formations.  Hence we are introduced afresh to the dilemma which I have already placed before you:  either the animals which came into existence on the fifth day were not such as those which are found at present, are not the direct and immediate ancestors of those which now exist; in which case, either fresh creations of which nothing is said, or a process of evolution, must have occurred; or else the whole story must be given up, as not only devoid of any circumstantial evidence, but contrary to such evidence as exists.

I placed before you in a few words, some little time ago, a statement of the sum and substance of Milton’s hypothesis.  Let me now try to state, as briefly, the effect of the circumstantial evidence bearing upon the past history of the earth which is furnished, without the possibility of mistake, with no chance of error as to its chief features, by the stratified rocks.  What we find is, that the great series of formations represents a period of time of which our human chronologies hardly afford us a unit of measure.  I will not pretend to say how we ought to estimate this time, in millions or in billions of years.  For my purpose, the determination of its absolute duration is wholly unessential.  But that the time was enormous there can be no question.