128 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



be a sufficient reason to conclude that they were 

 of the same species; since the races or varieties 

 of dogs have been influenced by the trammels of 

 domesticity, which these other animals never did, 

 and indeed never could experience. 



Farther, when I endeavour to prove that the 

 rocky strata contain the bony remains of seve- 

 ral genera, and the loose strata those of several 

 species, all of which are not now existing animals 

 on the face of our globe, I do not pretend that a 

 new creation was required for calling our - present 

 races of animals into existence. I only urge that 

 they did not anciently occupy the same places, and 

 that they must have come from some other part of 

 the globe. Let us suppose, for instance, that a 

 prodigious inroad of the sea were now to cover the 

 continent of New-Holland with a coat of sand and 

 other earthy materials ; this would necessarily bury 

 the carcasses of many animals belonging to the ge- 

 nera of kanguroo, phascoloma, dasyurus, peramela, fly- 

 ing-phalangerSi echidna, and ornithorynchus, and would 

 consequently entirely extinguish all the species of 

 all these genera, as not one of them is to be found 

 in any other country. Were the same revolution 

 to lay dry the numerous narrow straits which sepa- 

 rate New-Holland from New-Guinea, the Indian 

 islands, and the continent of Asia, a road would be 

 opened for the elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, 

 horses, camels, tigers, and all the other Asiatic ani- 

 mals, to occupy a land in which they are hitherto 



