160 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SENSE. 



the science of distribution has been actually created by evolution. 

 Before the idea of the modification of species was ventilated, no 

 science which could account for the diverse relationships of living 

 beings in sjrace was possible, because such explanation, on the theory 

 of special creation, was not required. Only, therefore, on the 

 hypothesis of evolution can any explanation of the distribution of 

 life be attempted. It may be likewise added that, in the facts of 

 distribution, the evolution hypothesis finds one of its strongest 

 supports. 



In 1605 appeared a curious work, entitled "The Restitution of 

 Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities, concerning the most noble and 

 renowned English Nation." The author one Verstegen informs 

 his readers in one chapter of the reasons for believing that the " Isle 

 of Albion" had been connected by "firm land with Gallia, now named 

 France, since the Flood of Noe." One passage from this quaint work 

 interests exceedingly the student of distribution. It runs as follows : 

 " Another reason there is that this separation hath been made since 

 the Flood, which is also very considerable, and that is the patriarch 

 Noe, having had with him in the ark all sorts of beasts, these then, 

 after the Flood, being put forth of the ark to increase and multiply, 

 did afterward in time disperse themselves over all parts of the con- 

 tinent or mainland ; but long after it could not be before the 

 ravenous wolf had made his kind nature known to man ; and there- 

 fore no man, unless he were mad, would ever transport of that race 

 out of the continent into the isles, no more than men will ever carry 

 foxes (though they be less damageable) out of our continent into 

 the Isle of Wight. But our Isle, as is aforesaid, continuing since 

 the Flood fastened by nature unto the Great Continent, these wicked 

 beasts did of themselves pass over. And if any should object that 

 England hath no wolves on it, they may be answered that Scotland, 

 being therewith conjoined, hath very many ; and so England itself 

 some time also had, until such time as King Edgar took order for 

 the destroying of these throughout the whole realm." 



That which to the contemporaries of Verstegen, as to many 

 persons ignorant of the teachings of geology even in our own day, 

 would seem a wild impossibility namely, the junction of England 

 and France by land surface is known to the tyro in geology to have 

 been a plain reality. Convulsions and disconnections, as well as 

 elevations and connections of land surfaces, are among the most 

 familiar facts of geological science, which views the land as an ever- 

 shifting quantity amid the factors of physical change. 



A brief allusion to some of the more familiar instances in which 

 the association or connection of land surfaces serves to account for 

 a likeness of the contained life, may demonstrate that the author of 

 " The Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities " was, in his 



