680 



A FEW REMARKS 



the idea that animals migrated to various quarters of the globe, 

 surely do not reflect that the swallow, the wdld swan, the wild 

 goose, the wild horse, the Norway rat, and numerous other 

 creatures, now migrate periodically in search of food or a better 

 climate. Similar instinct may have taught animals to wander 

 then, till they reached the places suited to them ;* and there 

 the same instinct would retain them. Want of proper food, 

 or climate ; or the attacks of enemies,-]- may have destroyed 

 stragglers who did not migrate ; therefore, when we find no 

 kangaroos in Europe, it is no proof that kangaroos did not 

 once exist there. Elks are now found in North America— we 

 know they were formerly in Europe — is that race here now ? 

 During the first few hundred years after the flood, extraor- 

 dinary changes may have taken place in the geography of the 

 world, in consequence of the drying and altering of various 

 portions ; also from the effects of volcanic eruptions and earth- 

 quakes, occasioned perhaps by electric action on newly-exposed 

 land, as well as by other causes. Many places, now islands, 

 may have been united to a continent for a considerable period 

 after the deluge ; much land may have sunk down, much may 

 have risen up, in various parts of the world. Such changes are 

 said to be going on even now, though on a small scale (Lyeli, 

 Darwin, &c.) ; what may they not have been during the first 

 few centuries after the flood .^^ Volcanic eruptions, such as those 

 of the Galapagos, Andes, Etna, Auvergne, Indian Islands, &c., 

 were then perhaps in such activity as they have never shown 

 since. 



What the division in the earth was, in the days of Peleg, 

 does not distinctly appear : but it could only have been a 

 separation from the true faith ; a partition of territory among 

 men ; or some mighty convulsion, some rending or contraction, 



* We see abundant evidence that either living creatures are adapted 

 to particular climates and localities, or that climates and localities are 

 adapted to particular creatures ; which latter, it has been proved by 

 many authors, are altered by any material change of the former. 



t It should be remembered, that man was allowed to eat flesh after 

 the flood. Gen. ix. ver. 3. 



* 



