66 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XII 



a pair of every known animal would not fit within the space. 

 Again, the insect population could not be sustained alive that 

 length of time without ample supply of every food plant. More- 

 over, all gill-breathing creatures could survive outside in their 

 antediluvian abundance, and the conventionally fixed 5,000 years 

 or less since the f^ood would not suffice to restore the balance of 

 numbers between creatures with lungs and creatures with gills. 

 The best that the literal interpreters can do with this passage is to 

 argue that evolution has multiplied the number of species and that 

 the ark did contain every species then existing. At the present 

 rate of evolving new species it would take to double the number 

 of animals at least a hundred times the number of years that 

 have elapsed since the flood. It is merely more pity that Genesis 

 should be distorted. 



In Leviticus appears a list of insects that may be eaten, the 

 definition being " flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, 

 which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth." 

 The inspired lawgiver of Leviticus was not an entomologist. He 

 had not observed, perhaps no one had observed that an insect has 

 six legs. Eveii Aristotle described the day fly as having four 

 legs. How thoroughly absurd are some comments by sermon 

 writers trying to twist out of their own difficulties. One clergy- 

 man wrote that the locust has only four crawling legs and that 

 Moses could not consider the saltatory ones as legs at all. An 

 English preacher declared that the forefeet of insects are so often 

 used as paws that they cannot be properly considered as feet. 



The first Old Testament mention of a creature undoubtedly an 

 insect is in Exodus VII., describing one of the plagues. The 

 plague of hail has often been interpreted as an insect plague, their 

 being nothing about the Hebrew word to indicate that it means 

 hail rather than any other damaging instrument. Evidence is too 

 slight for argument, so better accept the hail. The plague to be 

 examined is thus described in the King James English : " Stretch 

 out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become 

 lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so; for 

 Aaron stretched out his hand and his rod, and smote the dust 

 of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast; all the dust 

 of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt. And 



