376 LAKE SUPERIOR. 



where have all these fishes been created, there can be 1)ut one answer 

 given which will not be in conflict and direct contradiction with the 

 facts themselves, and the laws that regulate animal life. The fishes 

 and all other freshwater animals of the region of the great lakes, 

 must have been created where they live. They are circumscribed 

 within boundaries, over which they cannot pass, and to which there 

 is no natural access from other quarters. There is no trace of their 

 having extended further in their geographical distribution at any 

 former period, nor of their having been limited within narrower 

 boundaries. 



It cannot be rational to suppose that they were created in some 

 other part of the world, and were transferred to this continent, to 

 die away in the region where they are supposed to have originated, 

 and to multiply in the region where they are found. There is no 

 reason why we should not take the present evidence in their distri- 

 bution as the natural fact respecting their origin, and that they are, 

 and were from the beginning, best suited for the country where they 

 are now found. 



Moreover, they bear to the species which inhabit similar regions, 

 and live under similar circumstances in Europe and Asia, and the 

 Pacific side of this continent, such relations, that they appear to the 

 philosophical observer as belonging to a plan which has been carried 

 out in its details with reference to the general arrangement. The 

 species of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific side of this continent, cor- 

 respond in their general combination to the species of the eastern and 

 northern parts of the American continent, all over which the same 

 general types are extended. They correspond to each other on the 

 whole, but differ as to species. 



And again, this temperate fauna has such reference to the fauna 

 of the Arctic, and to that of the warmer zones, that any transposition 

 of isolated members of the whole plan, would disturb the harmony 

 which is evidently, maintained throughout the natural distribution of 

 organized beings all over the world. This internal evidence of an 

 intentional arrangement, having direct reference to the present geo- 

 graphical distribution of the animals, dispersed over the whole surface 

 of our globe, shows most conclusively, that they have been created 

 where they are now found. Denying this position were equivalent 



