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 Linneus, 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; 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.” * 
“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 ofxovuévy, 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, “ is 
directly opposed to geological phenomena ; which, with 
a variety of considerations, render it more probable that 
this deluge was strictly universal. It is incontestable 
* Hist. of Mankind, vol. i. p. 81. 
B 3 
