J8 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



admitting this it would enable us to answer in 

 the affirmative to the query above stated 

 namely, that there were species of animals ori- 

 ginally created which have since ceased to exist. 

 Being no longer necessary to bear a part in car- 

 rying on the general plan of Divine Providence 

 with regard to our globe, they were permitted or 

 caused to perish. 



One circumstance, which I have not seen 

 adverted to, seems to confirm this hypothesis : 

 that so few fossil remains, if any, of tropical 

 birds have hitherto been discovered in cold 

 countries, while such numbers of the quadru- 

 peds of warm climates, both viviparous and ovi- 

 parous, are met with every day in a fossil state. 

 Now the birds could readily shift their quarters 

 southward, when the temperature grew too cold 

 for them, while the quadrupeds might be stopped 

 by seas, rivers, and other obstacles. 



Another question may be asked with respect 

 to the subject I am discussing; might not the 

 animals now become superfluous have been ex- 

 cluded from the ark at the time of the general 

 deluge, and so left to perish ? This would furnish 

 a very easy solution of the difficulty, but the text 

 of Scripture seems too precise and express to 

 allow of such a supposition. For the command 

 to Noah is " Of every living thing of all flesh, 

 two of every sort shall thou bring into the ark." 

 But yet the terms here employed must be limited 



