Biblical accounts of the creation week, deluge, and future conflagration provided early modern naturalists with an idiom for exploring changes in the Earth over time. Scheuchzer was a leading Swiss naturalist and an advocate for the organic origin of fossils. In this popular natural history encyclopedia, organized as an illustrated companion for Bible reading, Scheuchzer portrayed the sequential development of the Earth during the days of the creation week. This series of depictions merged traditions of biblical illustration with conventions of natural history and provided an important precedent for later representations of pre-human worlds.