HYPOTHESIS ON ANIMAL GEOGRAPHY. 5 



the results furnished by zoological science will, never- 

 theless,, on a closer view,, rather tend to explain and 

 illustrate the sacred records. 



(6.) The hypothesis of Dr. Prichard relative to this 

 important question, and in refutation of the above 

 opinion, is marked by great intelligence. " It seems 

 difficult to maintain, with Linnaeus, that all the tribes 

 of land animals now existing descended from a stock 

 that was preserved in Noah's ark, because, in that case, 

 they must all have been congregated in one spot j a 

 supposition which can hardly be reconciled with the 

 results of zoological researches. But, perhaps, there is 

 no necessity of assuming any such position. It is no- 

 where asserted in the Mosaic history; and who can 

 prove that the various nations of animals which have 

 the centre of their abode, and seem to have had the 

 origin of their existence, in distant regions, as Australia 

 and South America, were not created since the era of 

 that deluge, which the human race, and the species of 

 animals that were their companions, survived ? This, 

 indeed, seems to be the conclusion which facts, every 

 day discovered, dispose us more and more to adopt/'* 

 fe The deluge recorded in Genesis," continues our 

 author, " was, perhaps, not universal, in the strict sense 

 of the word, as it is now understood. The whole earth, 

 the kol aeretz, which is said to have been submerged, 

 might be only all the ohovfAcvi), or habitable world ; it 

 might only extend to the utmost limits of the human 

 race ; and other regions, with their peculiar organised 

 creations, might be supposed to have escaped ; and this 

 hypothesis might, perhaps, be maintained without 

 doing any violence to the sacred text, of which every 

 expression has received a divine sanction." But this 

 supposition, as our author very candidly admits, lt is 

 directly opposed to geological phenomena j which, with 

 a variety of considerations, render it more probable that 

 this deluge was strictly universal. It is incontestable 



* Hist, of Mankind, vol. L p. 81. 

 B 3 



