138 
Nor is this all. The very same difficulties would meet 
them when they made their exit from the Ark. 
“ How,” says Miller, “ had the Flood been universal, could even such 
islands as Great Britain and Ireland have ever been replenished with many 
of their original inhabitants ? Even supposing it possible that animals, such 
as the red deer and the native ox, might have swam across the Straits of 
Dover, or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones 
and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the 
feat would have surely been far beyond the power of such feeble natives of 
the soil as the mole, the hedge-hog, the shrew, the dormouse, and the field- 
vole.” 
Equally pertinent are the remarks of Dr. Pye Smith : — 
“ All land animals, having their geographical regions, to which their con- 
stitutional natures are congenial — many of them being unable to live in any 
other situation — we cannot represent to ourselves the idea of their being brought 
into one small spot, from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other 
climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia, and the thousands 
of islands — their preservation, and provision, and final disposal of them — 
without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are 
recorded in Scripture.” 
We read of no provision in the Ark for the preservation of 
the inhabitants of the waters, -nor, a hundred years ago, was this 
considered at all necessary. It was assumed that, inasmuch 
as the denizens of the deep and of the rivers would still be 
in their native element, the commingling of fresh water and 
salt water over the whole globe would prove no inconvenience to 
them. Science speaks otherwise plow, however. Very few 
species of fish, indeed, can exist in brackish water. With the 
exception of some, like the salmon, which at one time is an 
inhabitant of the sea, and at another time an inhabitant of 
the river, the greater part of our salt-water and fresh-water 
fish would certainly have been destroyed by the conditions 
which a universal flood assumes to have existed. Confir- 
matory of this is a fact mentioned by Mr. Miller, in his 
Footprints of the Creator , a felicitous title to a book which 
demolishes many of the fallacies in the Vestiges of the Na- 
tural History of Creation. He tells us that in the lake of 
Stennis, in the Orkney Islands, the fish and plants on the 
banks have each their locality, according as the water at 
its junction with the sea is salt, or farther in, brackish, or 
still farther, fresh. And though the more hardy members of 
each class are sometimes to be found out of their natural 
