PllELIMINABY OBSERVATIONS. 5 



being deduced from the analogies extant in each. These 

 investigations are confirmed by the Scriptural account 

 that " The whole earth was of one language and of one 

 speech," previous to the Flood, and it describes the first 

 migration as coincident with the subsidence of the 

 waters. 



That violent cataclysms have since altered the face of 

 the then existing earth, the records of geological science 

 amply show; and that some of mankind, in every portion 

 of the then inhabited world, survived these catastrophes, 

 and subsequently perpetuated the varieties of race, may 

 be inferred from those differences in moral and physical 

 features which now exist, and which have sometimes 

 suggested the impossibility of a collective derivation 

 from one stock. The philological thread, although gene- 

 rally a mere filament of extreme tenuity, holds all firmly 

 together. 



That animals had been domesticated in a very early 

 stage of man^s existence, we have distinct proof in many 

 recent geological discoveries, and all these discoveries 

 show the same animals to have been in every instance 

 subjugated; thus pointing to a primitive and earlier 

 domestication in the regions where both were originally 

 produced. That pasture land was provided for the sus- 

 tenance of tliese animals, they being chiefly herbivorous, 

 is a necessary conclusion. Thence ensues the fair 

 deduction that phanerogamous , or flower-bearing plants 

 coexisted, and bees, consequently, necessarily too, — thus 

 participating reciprocal advantages, they receiving from 

 these plants sustenance, and giving them fertility. 



These islands, under certain modifications, were, pre- 

 vious to the glacial period, one land with the continent of 

 Europe ; and it was when thus connected that those 



