Conjectural Ohsen^athns on the Mammoth. 155 



Iher brutal ferocitv nor liunian slall can avail, should be 

 lett overlonked, and not provided against? I say, if we as- 

 sent to such a supposition, we t'orni a chasm in zoologiciii 

 CECononiy which the wisdom of nature throughout her va- 

 rious analogies stamps as unwarrantable. 



So important a query, one would imagine, would scarcely 

 have been left undiscussed, as applicable to so furmidabie a 

 race of beings as the serpent tribe, against whose undue in-- 

 creasc*, however desirable, no efleclual bar seen)S to be 

 provided, no means of evasion successful, and against which 

 the opposition of other animals is attempted but to their 

 certain fatality. 



In the primitive ages of the world, v^hen the paucity of 

 mankind must have allowed of the unlimited extension cf 

 all the classes of inferior beings f, the tribes of the serpent 

 kind, if no natural means of opposition from other animals 

 were furnished, must have increased to an incalculable de- 

 gree both in numbers and size. Combining in themselve* 

 at once insatiable rapacity with incredible abstinence, their 

 age and growth apparently unlimited, their amphibious na- 

 ture allowing an extension of their ravages to the inhabit- 

 ants of the watery clement as well as those of the land, and 

 at the same time suflering them alike to evade th^ prema- 

 ture view of their prev ; with such noxious qualities they 

 hold a scale in the creation perhaps not Jess formidable than 

 would appear the combined disadvantages of all other fero- 

 cious beings. Nor can we suppose that the general deluge, 

 which at once destroyed the several tribes of land animals, 

 at all diminished the numbers of the serpent kind. We have 

 no reason to conclude that amphibious animals were in- 

 cluded in the ark anymore than fish ; and although na- 

 turalists agree that the largest species of serpents are most 

 frequently found in fresh water, yet it does not follow that 

 so weak a saline solution as the mixture of the rain witU 

 the waters of the ocean, .which together composed the wa- 

 ters of the deluge, siiould prove disagreeable to them : it is 

 true, some suppose the sea to havo l)een more saturated \\'ith 

 balinc jnatter in the primitive ages than since |, on account 



• The smaller species casually become a prey to carnivoro'JS binis and 

 animals. 



+ The Indian missionaries reported tHat vast tracts of that country 

 Jiad long betn uninhabitable by reason of tl!c increase of rbi; brute crea- 

 jiim, so that whatever man cultiviited for the support of life was de» 

 Stroytd without possibility of prevention, — Emqc/oJ>. Bi:Imi. vol. v, 



p -743 



* K iiv.yn'i Geological Essays, p, 377, 



of 



