In order to ascertain the real weight of this objection we hare to investigate two points:—­

1.  What are the animals to which the Mosaic Record refers?

2.  What does it really tell us about the creation of those animals?

1.  It is commonly assumed that all living creatures are comprehended under the terms used in describing the work of the fifth and sixth days.  But a more careful examination shows that there is no real ground for this assumption.  The first point which presents itself is the omission of the Hebrew word for fish, [Hebrew script], in the account of the fifth day—­an omission the more marked, because the word does occur in vv. 26, 28, in which dominion over all living creatures is granted to man.  The two words which are used in ver. 21 are [Hebrew script] from [Hebrew script], to stretch out, to extend, and [Hebrew script], from [Hebrew script], identical with [Hebrew script], to trample with the feet.  The description then points us to animals of great size, especially length, which trample with the feet.  “Great sea-monsters,” Gesenius calls them.  These words clearly indicate the Saurian and allied tribes of reptiles; and when we turn to the rocks we find the remains of these creatures occurring in great numbers, precisely at the point which Moses assigns to them.

Again, in the account of the sixth day, three classes of animals are mentioned; but we have no means whatever of ascertaining what kinds of animals were comprehended in these three classes, or whether they included all the mammalia then known to the Jews; much less then are we justified in inferring that they comprehend all mammalia that were then, or ever had been in existence.

But it may perhaps appear strange, that the account of the Creation of living beings should be of such limited extent, embracing only reptiles, birds, and mammals.  A little consideration, however, will remove this apparent strangeness.  We should, perhaps, naturally expect to have some notice of the first appearance of animal life; but from the circumstances under which Moses wrote such a notice was simply impossible.  The lowest and simplest form of life with which we are now acquainted is the Amoeba Princeps, a minute particle of jelly-like substance, called sarcode—­scarcely larger than a small grain of sand—­and with no distinction of organs or limbs. [Footnote:  Carpenter, The Microscope and its Revelations, p. 428.] The oldest known fossil, Eozoon Canadense, is of a class but little above this—­the foraminifera; we may therefore deem it probable that life began with some form not very unlike the Amoeba.  How could the formation of such a creature have been described to the contemporaries of Moses?  They could have had no idea of its existence.  To describe the first beginnings of life then, was, under the circumstances, an absolute impossibility.  But if a part only of the long series of animal life could possibly be noticed, the determination of the point at which he should first speak of it would be left to the writer, guided as he would be by considerations of the object for which, and the persons for whom, he wrote, which we must necessarily in our position be unable duly to estimate.  All that we are entitled to expect is that the account, so far as it extends, should be in accordance with facts.