NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE, j^j 



the theologians, relying on the explicit statement of St. Paul that 

 the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there 

 could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological 

 imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine com- 

 mand, distributing over the earth the various animals, dropping 

 the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe, 

 the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North 

 America. 



It was under the impression made by the beginnings of this 

 new array of facts established by the earlier voyages of discovery 

 that in 1667 Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on 

 The Origin of Animals and the Migrations of Peoples. An acute 

 author says that this book shows, as no other does, the shock and 

 strain to which the discovery of America subjected the received 

 theological scheme of things. The book was issued with the full 

 and special approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it indi- 

 cates the possibility that a solution of the whole trouble might be 

 found in the text, " Let the earth bring forth the living creature 

 after his kind." Milius goes on to show that the ancient philoso- 

 phers agree with Moses, and that " the earth and the waters, and 

 especially the heat of the sun and of the genial sky, together with 

 that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in the 

 soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals, and 

 birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those who 

 imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. 

 But the subject with which Milius especially grapples is the dis- 

 tribution of animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species 

 found in America and in remote islands of the ocean species 

 entirely unknown in the other continents and of course he is 

 especially troubled by the fact that these species existing in those 

 exceedingly remote parts of the earth do not exist in the neigh- 

 borhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses that to explain the dis- 

 tribution of animals is the most difl&cult part of the problem. If 

 it be urged that birds could reach America by flying and fishes 

 by swimming, he asks, " What of the beasts which neither fly nor 

 swim ? " Yet even as to the birds he asks, " Is there not an in- 

 finite variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily, 

 and have such a horror of the water, that they would not even 

 dare trust themselves to fly over a wide river ? " As to fishes, he 

 says, " They are very averse to wandering from their native 

 waters," and he shows that there are now reported many species 

 of American and East Indian fishes entirely unknown on the 

 other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be explained 

 by any theory of natural dispersion. 



Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dis- 

 persed over the earth by the direct agency of man for his use or 



VOL. XLIV. 55 



