THE NO A CHI AN FLOOD. 43 



ing to the old opinion. We find from the words of the 

 narrative, that the patriarch Noah was intrusted with the 

 task of collection. To achieve it, then, he must have 

 gone in person, or sent expeditions, to Australia for the 

 kangaroo and the wombat, to the frozen North for the 

 Polar bear, to Africa for the gorilla and the chimpanzee; 

 the hippopotamus of the Nile, the elk, the bison, the dodo, 

 the apteryx, the emeu and the cassowary must have been 

 brought together by vast efforts from distant quarters. 

 The patriarch or his agents must have been endowed 

 with a supernatural knowledge of natural history far 

 surpassing Solomon's or that of our own times, that they 

 might properly distinguish varieties and species, so that 

 no species might be omitted and none represented by 

 more than one variety. To accomplish this with the 

 minutest insects, they must have been provided with 

 powerful microscopes. Every portion of the dry land of the 

 globe must have been accessible to them ; every jungle, 

 cavern, and ravine. The little islands that lose them- 

 selves in mid-ocean must all have been ransacked; the 

 search, too, that might not neglect any acre of ground 

 in all the continents of the world, would be distracted 

 with the most varied and incongruous pursuits. Sheep, 

 game, caterpillars, beasts of prey, snails, eagles, fleas and 

 titmice, must all have their share of attention. Unusual 

 pains must be employed to secure them uninjured. They 

 must be fed and cared for during a journey, perhaps, of 

 thousands of miles, till they reach the ark ; they must 

 be hindered from devouring one another while the search 

 is continued for rats and bats and vipers and toads and 



