PALAEONTOLOGY AND GEOLOGY 



ceptance of the Deluge. According to Haeckel," he 

 even went so far as to calculate the size of Mt. Ararat 

 and found that it was ample to be a temporary refuge 

 for representatives of all the species of animals 

 known to him, and in that day no one else knew as 

 many. He also pointed out the wisdom of the Creator 

 in selecting a high mountain in a hot climate, since 

 the diversity of its climate would permit tropical 

 animals to cluster at its base, its middle portion could 

 afford an asylum for inhabitants of the temperate 

 zone, and, on the top, polar bears and other lovers of 

 the cold could endure for a short time. However, he 

 neglected to show how the polar bear passed from 

 Mt. Ararat to the Arctic Zone without crossing the 

 burning sands of Asia. This anecdote is not given to 

 sneer at the frailty of a great man but, rather, to show 

 that profundity in a special field of work is very fre- 

 quently accompanied by naivete when the subject is 

 a little foreign to one's specialty. To show the per- 

 sistence of this Noachian theory, we find that as late 

 as 1821 fossil bones of large tropical animals which 

 had been discovered in a cave in Yorkshire, England, 

 were explained as the remains of animals caught in 

 the ooze of the Deluge. The caves themselves were 

 accounted for as being immense bubbles which had 

 been blown in the soft mud by the pressure of the 

 gases set free by the decaying bodies of the monsters. 

 Judging from what Professor Conklin calls the pres- 



9 History of Creation, vol. I, p. 45. 



I 131 1 



