theory persisted much longer (in perfect harmony with Catholic traditions); but no theologian now lends his support to it. The story of the six-days creation was simultaneously abandoned. The time which must have elapsed between the first descent of water upon the cooled film of the shrinking planet and the appearance of man in the upper strata of the crust (to confine ourselves to geology) is incalculable: the various estimates of scientists, both thermo-dynamicists and geologists, are widely divergent, but no authority claims less than 15,000,000 years for the formation of the earth alone. The days of Genesis, therefore, became the subject of further vigorous speculation and pseudo-scientific activity. The theory that a long period closed by a cataclysm must be placed between the first verse of Genesis and the commencement of the "days" was followed by a theory that the days were long periods of time; then by the admission that the periods were not strictly consecutive, or that they were visions of Adam or of Noah; and finally by the theory that the chapter was merely a religious poem or allegory. To day, after the floods of literature that have been poured out, and the fierce and prolonged resistance to the progress of a science which is of great service to humanity, it is quietly recognised that the famous first chapter of Genesis is an expurgated version, by the unknown Elohist, of a Babylonian myth with no title to respect.
But there was yet a third violent controversy over the Genesiac version of the origin of the universe. According to Genesis, God had created all animals and plants according to their kind. It became, therefore, the sacred belief of Christendom that God had immediately and distinctly created all the species of the animate world. St. Augustine, it is true, makes a vague suggestion of the opposite, the evolutionary, hypothesis, which had been clearly taught in more ancient philosophies and theologies. However that may be, the theological world was profoundly convinced of the immutability and distinct origin of species when Treviranus and Lamarck threw out the first scientific defences of the contrary hypothesis, to be followed immediately by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. At once biology was added to the number of the victims of theology. There was, how ever, a lull in the storm until Chambers published his semi-evolutionary "Vestiges of Creation" in 1844. Eight years
