Nature and the Bible A course of lectures delivered in New York, in December, 1874, on the Morse foundation of the Union theological seminary . life naturally precedes animal lifeas being the sole source of the food of ani-mals. We know that land existed from aperiod at least as old as that of the first animalremains, and it would be somewhat anomalousif it remained during all the earlier periods ofgeological time unclothed with may, therefore, be in this direction dis-coveries in store for geology, though from thehighly metamorphic condition of the oldestsed
Nature and the Bible A course of lectures delivered in New York, in December, 1874, on the Morse foundation of the Union theological seminary . life naturally precedes animal lifeas being the sole source of the food of ani-mals. We know that land existed from aperiod at least as old as that of the first animalremains, and it would be somewhat anomalousif it remained during all the earlier periods ofgeological time unclothed with may, therefore, be in this direction dis-coveries in store for geology, though from thehighly metamorphic condition of the oldestsediments, it is possible that no remains mayexist of this primeval vegetation.* Theremay be some reference to this first vegetationin the statement in Gen. ii., that God had not * If any Laurentian or Pre-laurentian land flora should bediscovered, analogy would lead us to believe that it would consistof plants so simple in structure that they might be mistaken foralgse while they might be tree-like in dimensions, and more ad-vanced in their fructification than the structure of their stems andother vegetative organs would lead us to Psilophyton princeps, one of the oldest Land Plants known to geology—fromthe Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian. (a) Its fruit. {b) Part ofits Stem, (c) Scalariform vessels from its stem magnified. The figure isrestored from specimens described by the author. Nature and the Bible. PLATE IV. P- 107- IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE. 107 caused it to rain upon the earth, but that, amist went up and watered the face of theground. Now it happens that we know, bythe evidence of rain marks, that there wasrain as far back as the primordial ages, so thatthis would place the first plants probably atleast as far back as the Laurentian age ofgeology. It may be proper to add here, thatas it is the plan of the first chapter of Genesisto mention the original introduction of eachnew form of being, and not the details of itshistory, a vegetation of simple structure,
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