130 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June 



animals taken into the Ark, five times repeated, and that of 

 anim^ils destroyed, twice given, show that only a very limited 

 number of species were in the Ark, and that of the rest some 

 certainly survived — others may have perished. Farther, the 

 catastrophe does not require us to suppose either that coral 

 polypes and other marine animals were overwhelmed with fresh 

 water or under an abyssal depth of ocean, for the submergence of 

 the dry land, or of a portion of it, by the " breaking up of the 

 fountains of the great deep," docs not imply a deepening of the 

 ocean, but possibly to some small extent a shallowing of it. If 

 the Royal Institution, of London, which has recently done so much 

 in its courses of lectures to ventilate new and sometimes 

 questionable scientific hypotheses, would employ some one to 

 give a few exegetical lectures on the earlier chapters of Grenesis, 

 without entering into any disputed questions of criticism, but 

 merely explaining the literal meaning of the terms of the record, 

 it would confer an inestimable benefit on those Naturalists who 

 seem to have derived their notions of the Biblical Creation and 

 Deluge from the picture books and toy Noah's Arks of their 

 childhood, with the comments of their nursery-maids thereon. 



It still remains to us to inquire whether the doctrine of 

 derivation can throw any light on the origin of life at first. 

 Nothing in the doctrine of derivation itself necessitates the belief 

 that change has always been in the direction of improvement or 

 of increased complexity ; but the Geological history of the earth 

 and the succession of fossils lead to the belief that the general 

 tendency of creation has been from more generalized to more 

 specialized forms, and from simpler to more complex organisms. 

 Still, it is evident that this general doctrine of improvement is to 

 be held with some limitations of detail. For example, the very 

 lowest forms of life have continued down to the present, and 

 some of them — for instance, the sponges and Foraminifera — have 

 apparently attained to their greatest extension in number of 

 species in comparatively late periods. Further, every new form 

 when first introduced appears to be at its maximum in point of 

 development ; or, if not so, it rapidly attains to this, and again 

 deteriorates when being supplanted by other and newer forms. 

 Numerous examples of this will occur to every Geologist. 

 Admitting, however, that development has in some cases been 

 indefinitely postponed, and that in others it has .advanced by 

 successive waves, each retreating before the advance of the next, 



