DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 53 



population of the New World appears to have 

 been derived from Europe and Asia ; and if so, 

 there is a door open, through which Providence 

 might also have conducted those North American 

 animals that are found in no other country. 



But besides the probable, or possible, modes 

 by which the transit of animals to their respect- 

 ive settlements might have been accomplished, 

 Mr. Lyell, in the second volume of his Principles 

 of Geology, has suggested one which might, 

 amongst others, have been employed for this 

 purpose. 



" Captain W. H. Smyth informs me," says he, 

 " that, when cruising in the Cornwallis, amidst the 

 Philippine islands, he has more than once seen, 

 after those dreadful hurricanes called typhoons, 

 floating islands of (matted) wood, with trees 

 growing upon them ; and that ships have some- 

 times been in eminent peril, in consequence of 

 mistaking them for terra firma." Mr. Lyell 

 conjectures, not improbably, that by means of 

 such an insular raft, or wandering Delos, " if 

 the surface of the deep be calm, and the rafts 

 carried along by a current, or wafted by a slight 

 breath of air fanning the foliage of the green 

 trees, it may arrive, after a passage of several 

 weeks, at the bay of an island, into which its 

 plants and animals may be poured out as from 

 an ark ; and thus a colony of several hundred 

 new species may at once be naturalized." Thus 



