44 GEOGRAPHICAL AND LOCAL 



may differ as to its cause. 1 If this was the 

 case, as it probably was, any individual species 

 might have been located in any country, north 

 or south, and suffer no inconvenience from un- 

 accustomed heat or cold, so as to interfere 

 with its complete naturalization : the only other 

 requisite would be a kind of food suited to its 

 nature ; and it is singular and worthy of par- 

 ticular attention, that a large proportion of the 

 plants, as well as animals, that are found in a 

 fossil state in our northern latitudes are of a 

 tropical type or character. 



After their creation, and perhaps the expulsion 

 of the first pair from Paradise, we may suppose 

 that the various animals of the antediluvian world 

 were guided to those regions in which it was the 

 will of Providence to place them, by a divine im- 

 pulse upon them, which caused them to move in 

 the right direction. Probably before the Deluge 

 took place, the world was every where peopled 

 with animals : and perhaps, as Professor Buck- 

 land has suggested, the sudden change of tem- 

 perature that destroyed the northern animals 

 might be one of the predisposing causes of that 

 event. 



Under the present head, the geographical dis- 

 tribution of our postdiluvian races of animals, the 

 first thing to be considered is the means by which, 



1 See above, p. 17, &c. 



