Geographical Distribution. 241 
wool or hair of moving quadrupeds, and so to further 
their own dissemination. But, as we have just seen, 
there are no quadrupeds in the islands to meet 
these beautiful adaptations on the part of the plants ; 
so that special creationists must resort to the almost 
impious supposition that in these cases the Deity has 
only carried out half his plan, in that while he made 
an elaborate provision for these uniquely created 
species of plants, which depended for its efficiency on 
the presence of quadrupeds, he nevertheless neglected 
to place any quadrupeds on the islands where he had 
placed the plants. Such one-sided attempts at adap- 
tation surely resolve the thesis of special creation to a 
reductio ad absurdum; and hence the only reasonable 
interpretation of them is, that while the seeds of allied 
or ancestral plants were able to float to the islands, no 
quadrupeds were ever able over so great a distance to 
swim. 
Although much more evidence might still be given 
under the head of geographical distribution, I must 
now close with a brief summary of the main points 
that have been adduced. 
After certain preliminary considerations, I began 
by noticing that the theory of evolution has a much 
more intelligible account to give than has its rival of 
the facts of discontinuous distribution—the Alpine 
flora, for instance, being allied to the Arctic, not 
because the same species were separately created in 
both places, but because during the glacial period 
these species extended all over Europe, and were 
left behind on the Alps as the Arctic flora receded 
northwards—which was sufficiently long ago to ex- 
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