ox THE DELUGE. 



671 



of elements. Do we not now find animals terrified by an earth- 

 quake — birds shunning the scene of violence, — dogs running 

 out of a town,* and rats forsaking a sinking ship ? What over- 

 coming terror would possess the animated beings on an island, 

 if it were found to be rapidly sinking while worse than tropical 

 torrents, aggregated water-spouts, thunder and lightning, 

 earthquakes and volcanic eruptions united to dismay, if not to 

 paralyse, the stoutest human heart : yet such probably would 

 be but a faint similitude of the real deluge. Those who have 

 themselves witnessed the war of elements, in some regions of 

 our globe, are perhaps more able to conceive an idea, however 

 inadequate, of such a time, than persons who have scarcely 

 travelled beyond Europe, or made more than ordinary sea 

 voyages. Happily for man, hurricanes or typhoons occur but 

 rarely : earthquakes, on a great scale ; their overwhelming 

 waves ; and devastating eruptions of volcanoes, still less often. 

 That the approach of a general calamity would have affected 

 animals, what we now see leads us to infer, and that many 

 would have fled to the ark, is only in accordance with the won- 

 derful instinct they are gifted with for self-preservation. Proud 

 man would, in all probability, have despised the huge construc- 

 tion of Noah, and laughed to scorn the idea that the moun- 

 tains could be covered, even when he saw the waters rising. 

 Thither, in his moral blindness, he would have fled, with num- 

 bers of animals that were excluded from the ark, or did not go 

 to it ; for we do not see all animals, even of one kind, equally 

 instinctive. As the creatures approached the ark, might it 

 not have been easy to admit some, perhaps the young and the 

 small, while the old and the large were excluded ?•]' As we do 



* Concepcion and Talcahuano, pp. 403, 5. 



t The small number of enormous animals that have existed since the 

 Deliig"e, may be a consequence of this shutting- out of all but a very few. 

 We are not told how many creatures died in th"e ark ; some of those least 

 useful to man may have gone : but, even if none died, the few that quitted 

 the ark could hardly have long- withstood the rapid increase of enemies, 

 unless their increase had been proportionably quick. Whether Job had 

 himself seen, or only heard of, the leviathan and the behemotb, does not 

 appear; but that those monsters were the megalosaurus and the iguana- 

 don 



