388 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 



development of the animal and vegetable kingdoms differs 

 widely, under the same latitudes, in the northern and in the 

 southern hemispheres, and that there are entire families of 

 plants and animals exclusively circumscribed within certain 

 parts of the world ; such are, for instance, the magnolia and 

 cactus in America, the kangaroos in New Holland, the ele- 

 phants and rhinoceros in Asia and Africa, &c., &c. 



[ 640. From these facts we may indeed conclude, that 

 there are other influences acting in the distribution of animals 

 and plants besides climate ; or, perhaps, we may better put 

 the proposition in this form : that however intimately con- 

 nected with climate, however apparently dependent upon it, 

 vegetation is, in truth, independent of those influences, at 

 least so far as the causal connection is concerned, and merely 

 adapted to them. This position would at once imply the ex- 

 istence of a power regulating these general phenomena in such 

 a manner as to make them agree in their mutual connection ; 

 that is to say, we are thus led to consider nature as the work 

 of an intelligent Creator, providing for its preservation under 

 the combined influences of various agents equally his work, 

 which contribute to their more diversified combinations. 



[ 641. The geographical distribution of organized beings 

 displays more fully the direct intervention of a Supreme 

 Intelligence in the plan of creation, than any other adapta- 

 tion in the physical world. Generally, the evidence of such 

 an intervention is derived from the benefits, material, intel- 

 lectual, and moral, which man derives from nature around 

 him, and from the mental conviction which consciousness im- 

 parts to him, that there could be no such wonderful order in 

 the universe, without an omnipotent Ordainer of the whole. 

 This evidence, however plain to the Christian, will never be 

 satisfactory to the man of science, in that form. In these 

 studies evidence must rest upon direct observation and induc- 

 tion, just as fully as mathematics claims the right to settle ail 

 questions about measurable things. There will be no scien- 

 tific evidence of God's working in nature, until naturalists 

 have shown that the whole creation is the expression of a 

 thought, and not the product of physical agents. Now what 

 stronger evidence of thoughtful adaptation can there be, than 

 the various combinations of similar, though specifically differ-* 

 ent assemblages of animals and plants repeated all over the 



