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PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 119 
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trophe was to punish mankind for their sins. If mankind then existing on 
the earth occupied only one continent or part of the globe, and that part was 
overflowed with the swelling waters, so that man and animals associated 
with them were drowned, was not the word fulfilled, “I will destroy them 
with the earth?’ But as God never performs a single act in yain, or works 
a single operation in nature or providence but with some great end in view, 
may we not, without haying a heavy charge brought against us, enquire 
about the probability of these animals being destroyed which inhabited 
those parts of the world, with which the ungodly race of mankind had never 
come in contact, What a continued series of miracles must have been 
wrought, that animals which had never been associated with mankind might 
be brought from that distant-portion of the globe, across a trackless and 
untraversed ocean! During some of our evening meetings our attention has 
been directed to the marsupial or pouch-animals. It is a fact that with few 
exceptions the whole of this order of animals is found only in the southern 
portions of the globe, which are separated from the great continents of the 
northern hemisphere by a wide expanse of ocean. Geologists have elicited 
the fact that in ages long since past—ages indeed before the flood—the 
» animals which inhabited these districts, though many of them were of gigantic 
proportions, belonged to the marsupial type of the mammalia, i.¢., the order 
of anmials that now prevail in Australia. Without attempting to give an 
opinion upon this interesting question—Was the flood universal ?—we might 
ask— Were the representatives of these pouch-animals brought over from 
yonder ends of the earth to be preserved alive in the ark, and then, by what 
appears to us a most miraculous interposition, sent back to the Australian 
continent again, there, and only there, to originate a new line of- marsupial 
animals? Let it be remembered that this discussion does not involye a 
questioning of the truth of the inspired narrative, but of the correctness of 
» the interpretation put upon it by those who claim for themselves a very high 
authority, who are indeed both judge and appellant in the great court of 
scientific enquiry. 
There are some who think that as we grow older we should lay aside these 
‘studies of nature as suitable only to the days of boyhood and youth. Bulwer 
Lytton does not think so, and he is not young. Nor did the friend of his 
boyhood, he whom he loved so well. Those were striking words that 
astonished the youth in reply to the enquiry why he loved nature so 
much in his old age—“TI shall soon leaye the world: men and women 
‘I may hope~again to see elsewhere, bnt shall I see elsewers cornfields 
“and grass, goscamers and ants? As we lose hold of our five senses 
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do we wake up a sixth which had before been dormant,—the sense of 
nature ; or haye we certain instincts ain to nature which are suppressed 
and oyerlaid by reason, and reyiye only at the age when our reason 
