150 DARWINISM. 



Papuans and the Malays. The striking point is, that 

 these two contrasted races are separated by almost the 

 very same line which separates two great zoological pro- 

 vinces. On the old supposition of migration from the 

 ark, that the lower animals, as well as men, should have 

 ' agreed to differ' on the opposite sides of a narrow 

 deep-sea channel, was indeed a remarkable bundle of 

 coincidences. 



That traditions of a deluge are wide-spread is acknow- 

 ledged. That they are traditions of a universal deluge 

 neither is nor can be proved. That with all their local 

 variations and discrepancies they point to one and the 

 same deluge, is a question of probability, much more 

 proper to follow than to lead the main argument. We 

 shall not gain much for science or religion out of the 

 story of Deucalion's flood, which attributes the origin 

 of the new stock of men and women to the pebbles that 

 Deucalion and his wife threw over their shoulders ; an 

 ancestry surely less dignified even than that from the 

 orang-outang and the gorilla with which Mr. Pengelly 

 and Professor Huxley are supposed to have mortified the 

 dignity of mankind. 



It is surprising that so many good Christian people 

 should feel touchy on this question of an enormously 

 remote ancestry, although they would, upon occasion, 

 join with earnestness and true humility in the confession 

 that ( dust we are, and unto dust shall we return.' In 

 their reluctance even to examine the real truth of the 

 question, they fail to perceive that the true sons of the 

 Prophets are not their lineal descendants, but those who 



