was what had happened, and upon it he based the story of Noah and the ark. Or traditions of such a period in the earth's history may have been handed down by students before his time, or there could have been a great flood as described, that covered all the then known surface of the earth.

Moses said the Almighty commanded the earth to produce after its kind, and the waters to bring forth abundance of life. Science used to teach that carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur were all that were required to produce spontaneous life, and that all these elements existed in varying quantities almost everywhere and under various temperature and pressure, thus accounting for differing forms of life.

Now there is a new theory of the origin of life, called "Panspermy." This claims that spontaneous generation is impossible. It asserts as "an immutable law that lifeless matter cannot be transformed into living matter without the aid of living substance." So the theory is launched that life is passed from planet to planet by the transference of living germs. Like all such propositions, this one is figured with the most minute mathematical precision. It provides that these life germs shall be so small as to be invisible, of so little weight that they can be pushed across the great airless spaces existing between planets with rays of light, and so hardy that they will survive for centuries in cold as great as that of liquid hydrogen.

One point upon which Moses and all the scientists agree is that animal life originated in the water, and developed there for untold time before it appeared upon the land; and with different environment took on different forms. While these forms were developing in the water, in the warm, steaming, half-light on land great beds of mosses, marsh plants, and gigantic ferns fifty feet in height and with wide-spreading branches were growing. As the light grew stronger these fibrous growths fell before it, and succeeding ages covered them with upheavals from the waters, washing from the mountains, and the eternal sifting that we poetically call" star dust." At first thought

this would seem to form no considerable portion of the earth's surface, but when we remember that from the deck of a vessel sailing the ocean for a thousand miles an average of sixty-three barrels of dust can be swept, we realize that, although imperceptible to us, star dust is a factor in surface formation. Now we are digging these buried growths from where we consider the bowels of the earth," in a hardened state we call coal, and burning it for fuel, but the leaves and mosses that come to light imprinted or petrified upon it prove that once they were upon the surface.

This to me is the flaw in Panspermy. These first vegetable growths flourished in semi-darkness, while for ages previous animal life was developing in the darkened waters. The earth never had seen a ray of sunlight or moonlight. Thick vapour clouds were all around it. In order that Panspermy may prove true, it must be shown that it was possible for germs borne on rays of light to penetrate this fog and sow the land and water with life. The only explanation for this would seem to be that these germs were caught in the vapour clouds and fell upon the earth in the form of rain.

Now, as we dig up layers of coal, and the slate and rock which go to make the different formations of the earth's crust, we find the petrified remains of these first animals that crept from the waters and the beasts and birds that evolved from them. In the American Museum of Natural History can be seen the Brontosaurus," a little over fifteen feet tall, and almost sixty-seven feet long; the length of the leg bones, in comparison with the spine, proving that the head, neck, and tail were serpentine. In the British Museum there is part of the skeleton of the "Archæopteryx," and in Berlin à complete skeleton. The bird had a tail with twenty long, slender vertebræ, a skull with thirteen teeth above and three below, each set in a separate socket, feet like our birds of to-day, and wings, the third joint of which ended in three-fingered claws much longer than the feet, the feathers clearly outlined, and the specimen near the size of a crow. Our birds have shed their teeth and gradually dropped and

contracted their tails, until a queer little muscular appendage, having only a few very small vertebræ, fattish substance to hold the feathers and cover the oil sac, forms the tail. The two muscle and skin covered bones, that we call the third joint, have evolved from the long claws of the wing tip.

Every ancient writer who touched upon natural history proved that he knew of the existence of these toothed and tailed birds and winged serpents. As these creatures existed in the Jurassic Period, lost their tails by the middle Cretaceous, and shed the last tooth by the beginning of the Tertiary, long ages before the appearance of man, it is only reasonable to suppose that our ancestors knew of toothed birds just as we do, by finding petrified skeletons. The fact remains that the ancients knew, for they introduced these species into tradition and mythology, and even incorporated them in straight attempts at the natural history of their own day.

Pliny described an eagle, of which he wrote: "Lady Phœmonæ, who was supposed and said to be the daughter of Apollo, hath reported that this eagle is toothed ; with her accordeth Boethus likewise." He also wrote in describing the birds of Diomedes: "Toothed they are, and they have eyes as bright and red as fire; otherwise their feathers be all white. They are like unto the white sea mews with a black cop."

In support of the theory of the serpentine origin of birds, Aristotle said, "For they say there are winged serpents in Ethiopia." That "they say" undoubtedly referred to the statement of Herodotus, who described a serpent similar to our water snake : Its wings not feathered, but like those of bats."

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Every geological formation which is investigated helps to prove these statements concerning the beginning of serpent, bird, beast, and vegetable life. They combine with other facts of nature to prove that the water did bring forth abundantly" and that the earth yielded "after its kind." If you want to believe the theory of spontaneous life, that is all right. If you prefer the idea of life transference from planet to planet, that is your

privilege. If either is the origin of life, God is responsible for it, and He likes to have men develop their brain by studying His creations. The point is that I can conceive no plainer and truer method than that of Moses, in which to picture to an enslaved and superstitious people the story of the beginning of the world.

Again, Moses and his contemporaries in the compilation of the Bible wrote from their personal knowledge and the traditions of their ancestors. They had no authorities to whom to refer, at least they do not mention any, as do the writers of their time in Greece and Italy. Aristotle lived over a thousand years after the time of Moses, and wrote the first preserved records of bird life. He mentioned predecessors, who may have been contemporaneous with Moses; but their work was lost, and as it was done in another country and another language, there was not even a slight chance that Bible writers had any benefit from it. So that the birds mentioned in the Bible, and the history of their habits and characteristics, which is mostly used as the basis of comparisons of bird life with man, form our very earliest records.

Moses first wrote of the birds when he specified those which were not to be used for food, while compiling the laws to govern the Hebrews after they had reached the Promised Land. As a rule, it is easy to see why he so emphatically declared certain birds an "abomination." There was a good natural history reason, especially as the list stands in the latest and most scholarly translations. Other Bible writers accepted these laws of Moses, and what they had to say of birds was more in the way of comparing the processes of bird life with man. Solomon recorded th it he "spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes.”

Job, in replying to friends who brought him such dubious comfort at the time of his afflictions, continued that poetical strain in which his whole book is couched when he turned to nature for a comparison. He proved that he had

learned great lessons all around him, and was capable of speaking of what he learned comprehensively.

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee;

And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee;
Or, speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee;

Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this ?

In whose hand is the soul of every living thing,

And the breath of all mankind."

It was Job who indicated that, although chickens were unknown in his time, people were eating the eggs of fowls of some species when he asked :

"Can that which hath no savour be eaten without salt? Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?"

King David, who said of himself, "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer," unhesitatingly declared:

"I know all the fowls of the mountains:

And the wild beasts of the field are mine."

It was David who, in writing of the goodness of the Almighty to the Israelites, recorded that

"He rained flesh upon them also as dust,

And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea."

"the

Birds were so plentiful that the Creator enumerated fowls of the air" as one of the methods of destruction which should fall upon the Jews; and the son of Sirach wrote in Ecclesiasticus, "As birds flying down he sprinkleth the snow."

People were accustomed to seeing large flocks in migration. The birds of interior Africa came up to Bible lands, and those found there crossed the Mediterranean, each returning when driven by changes of season. Jeremiah proved that people of his time knew the birds, and spoke of them casually, just as we do, by recording that "The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming."