44 THE NO A CHI AN FLOOD. 



scorpions, and other animals which a patriarch, specially 

 singled out as just and upright and a lover of peace, 

 would naturally wish and naturally be selected to trans- 

 mit as a boon to his favoured descendants. 



It might be asked how, with the supernatural know- 

 ledge requisite for collecting all the terrestrial animals 

 of the globe,, and the unique opportunity for observation 

 afforded by a residence of some months with them in 

 the ark, no more scientific classification was arrived at 

 than that into birds and beasts and creeping things ? 

 But letting this pass, or scattering it and other objec- 

 tions to the winds by inventing a miracle to explain the 

 gathering together of the animals, we shall then have to 

 give some account of their re-distribution. Instead of 

 worrying ourselves with the problem, shall we at once 

 solve it by asserting that they were miraculously re- 

 transferred to the habitations from which they came? 

 This will be a highly satisfactory plan, if only it will 

 stop the mouths of those inquisitive persons who never 

 know when they are beaten in an argument. But one 

 cavil may easily be foreseen, requiring a new miracle to 

 satisfy it; for many of the animals must either have 

 been miraculously supplied with provisions, or miracu- 

 lously enabled to do without them ; or else, to take a 

 single instance, two spiders would have been limited to 

 a couple of flies, and when the flies had become ex- 

 tinct, because devoured by the spiders, the spiders also 

 would have become extinct through having no more 

 flies to devour ; and thus their preservation in the 

 ark, at the expense of a great many unrecorded and 



