66 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 



animals could swim across the Atlantic, nor would men 

 have tried to carry fierce beasts across in ships, nor does 

 he think it conformable to nature and the government 

 established by God that lions, tigers and wolves should 

 be engendered of the earth, like rats, frogs, bees and 

 other imperfect creatures. His own solution is much 

 more probable than any of the alternatives of Augustine, 

 viz., that the continents of the Old and New Worlds 

 meet or nearly so, perhaps towards the north pole, 

 where the maps of Acosta's day showed a great 

 widening-out of America. 



In another place Acosta shows that those who main- 

 tain that the quadrupeds now peculiar to America were 

 created there are at variance with the history of the 

 creation and the deluge. For why should it have been 

 necessary to preserve the animals in the ark, if they 

 could be created anew as required, and how could the 

 sacred history affirm that all was made and finished in 

 six days, if other animals of high grade were still to be 

 created ? We are bound therefore to suppose that the 

 peculiar animals of America, such as the alpaca and 

 the llama, came from the Old World. Perhaps all the 

 animals dispersed gradually after the subsidence of the 

 deluge, when such as found countries well suited to 

 their mode of life survived ; the rest perished. In the 

 end every region became populated by animals well 

 adapted to the local conditions, and not found else- 

 where. 



Every race, he goes on, not only of animals but of 

 men, shows peculiarities which are not essential, but 

 accidental, dijQFerences of colour, stature and so forth; 

 some apes have tails, some none ; some sheep are short- 

 haired (bare, Acosta says), others fleecy; some are 

 long-necked, others short-necked. But such "acci- 



