2.  “Let the earth bring forth the living creature.” Gen. i. 24.  Behold the word of God pervading creation, beginning even then the efficacy which is seen displayed to-day, and will be displayed to the end of the world!  As a ball, which one pushes, if it meet a declivity, descends, carried by its form and the nature of the ground and does not stop until it has reached a level surface; so nature, once put in motion by the Divine command, traverses creation with an equal step, through birth and death, and keeps up the succession of kinds through resemblance, to the last. cf. note on Hom. v. p. 76.  Nature always makes a horse succeed to a horse, a lion to a lion, an eagle to an eagle, and preserving each animal by these uninterrupted successions she transmits it to the end of all things.  Animals do not see their peculiarities destroyed or effaced by any length of time; their nature, as though it had been just constituted, follows the course of ages, for ever young. “Sed, si quæque suo ritu procedit, et omnes Fœdere naturæ certo discrimina servant.” Luc. v. 921.  “Let the earth bring forth the living creature.”  This command has continued and earth does not cease to obey the Creator.  For, if there are creatures which are successively produced by their predecessors, there are others that even to-day we see born from the earth itself.  In wet weather she brings forth grasshoppers and an immense number of insects which fly in the air and have no names because they are so small; she also produces mice and frogs.  In the environs of Thebes in Egypt, after abundant rain in hot weather, the country is covered with field mice. cf. Plin. ix. 84:  Verum omnibus his fidem Nili inundatio affert omnia exedente miraculo:  quippe detegente eo musculi reperiuntur inchoato opere genitalis aquæ terrœque, jam parte corporis viventes, novissima effigie etiamnum terrena.”  So Mela De Nilo i. 9. “Glebis etiam infundit animas, ex ipsoque humo vitalia effingit,” and Ovid, Met. i. 42: “Sic ubi deseruit madidos septemfluus agros Nilus, et antiquo sua flumina reddidit alveo, Æthereoque recens exarsit sidere limus, Plurima cultores versis animalia glebis Inveniunt.”  We see mud alone produce eels; they do not proceed from an egg, nor in any other manner; it is the earth alone which gives them birth. Arist. H.A. vi. 16.  Αἱ ἐγχέλυς γίγνονται εκ τῶν καλουμένων γῆς ἐντέρων ἃ αὐτόματα συνίσταται εν τῷ πηλῷ καὶ ἐν τῇ γῇ ἐνίκμῳ.  Καὶ ἤδη εἰσιν ὠμμέναι αἱ μὲν ἐκδύνουσαι ἐκ τούτων, αἱ δὲ ἐν διακνιζομένοις καὶ διαιρουμένοις γίγνονται φανεραί.  Let the earth produce a living creature.”