THE NOACHIAN FLOOD. 47 



to a low temperature would naturally have occupied 

 lowlands in the Glacial Period, from which, as the cold 

 gradually grew less and less intense, they would as 

 naturally have retired, some of- them northwards, others 

 to the cool heights of various mountains. 



That there was a Glacial Period, when great icebergs 

 travelled over England, a period geologically as but 

 of yesterday, though enormously more remote than any 

 historical dates, is now beyond all question. Equally 

 beyond question is it that countless ages and genera- 

 tions of living beings on the earth preceded that Glacial 

 Period. And, added to this, we find that there are forms 

 of life just where they would have been left by the effect 

 of that period, had there been an unbroken succession 

 from that time to this, and just where it is most unlikely 

 they should be found, had they been forced to travel to 

 those habitations from the door of the ark within the 

 practically insignificant period of 4300 years. 



But still further, we may compare the world of life 

 before the Flood with the world of life since. And here 

 surely it needs not the genius of Darwin or Lyell or 

 Owen to perceive the conclusiveness of the argument 

 which their genius has pointed out and enforced. For 

 instance, where the marsupials now live, there lived 

 marsupials in ages long before Noah, as the fossil 

 remains testify. The fossils are fossil marsupials, but 

 marsupials of species now extinct. So that the ' door of 

 the ark' theory requires us to believe that the marsupials 

 found their way to Australia, leaving no traces of their 

 route on land, crossing seas which they never subse- 



