THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 39 



a limited area, but utterly and ludicrously inadequate to 

 produce a total deluge enveloping 'all the high hills 

 under the whole heaven/ The notion is self-contra- 

 dictory that the ocean can be employed to raise its own 

 level, or that its general height can be increased by the 

 rain which it is its own part to supply. Nor is there 

 any indication afforded that a supernatural supply of 

 water was added to our planet, to the extent of several 

 hundred millions of cubic miles of liquid, which would 

 have been required for the purpose of drowning the 

 Caucasus and the Alps and Teneriffe and Popocatapetl 

 and Chimilari. We must consider also the difficulty of 

 breathing, and the intense cold that would have been 

 experienced at that stupendous altitude. There is the 

 old question of space in the ark; there is the old ques- 

 tion of the food-supply, sufficient and appropriate, to be 

 stored and sorted for its various occupants, carnivorous 

 and herbivorous, beasts of prey, carrion-birds, and am- 

 phibious monsters. But what are these compared with 

 the question how life could be sustained in the bitter 

 freezing atmosphere, thousands of feet above the line of 

 perpetual snow, by creatures accustomed to the lowlands 

 of the tropics ? Supposing, however, the atmosphere to 

 have been completely warmed by the rise of the ocean, 

 or even if the air within the ark was kept warm by its 

 enormous crowd of denizens, we are confronted by a new 

 difficulty, one that might seem laughable and improper 

 to mention but for its vast and pressing importance in 

 our own days, thwarting the physician, perplexing the 

 statesman, baffling the chemist and the engineer. To 



