the Lama in Peru; the Hippopotamus and Ostrich in Africa. Now we may ask, how were all these local animals conveyed from the place of disembarkation to the countries and climates that they severally inhabit? In considering this question, we must never lose sight of HIM, according to whose will, and by whose Almighty guidance, they were all led to the stations he had appointed for them, and with reference to which he had organized and formed them. Whatever second causes he might commission to effect this purpose, they were fully instructed and empowered by him to accomplish the work intrusted to them. I do not mean here to infringe the rule, Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus. Where the faculties, senses, and wants of an animal were sufficient for its guidance, there was no need for Divine interposition, but where these are insufficient guides, the animal must attain its destined station under some other influence.

What brought the various animals to the ark previously to the deluge? Doubtless a divine impulse upon them, similar to that which caused the milch-kine to carry the ark of the covenant to Bethshemesh, with the offerings of the lords of the Philistines. Noah, though he probably selected the clean animals, at least those that were domesticated, could have little or no influence over the wild ones to compel them to congregate by pairs, at the time fixed upon for their entry

into the ark. So in the dispersion of animals, wherever man went he took his flocks and herds, and domestic poultry, and those in his employment for other purposes, with him: but the wild ones were left to follow as they would, or rather as God directed.

Every one who looks at a map of the world, on Mercator's projection, can easily conceive how the animal population of the greatest part of the old world made their way into the different countries of which it consists, but when he looks at America and New Holland, he feels himself unable satisfactorily to explain the migration of animals thither, especially those that can live only in a warm climate, at least as far as regards the former. How, he might ask, did the Sloths, the Anteaters, and the Armadillos get to South America? If the climate of Behrings Straits, after the deluge, was as cold as it is at this day, they could never have made their way thither, and in those latitudes the temperature of which was adapted to their organization the vast Pacific presents an insuperable barrier.

The same question may be asked with respect to the indigenous animals of New Holland; the Kangaroo, the Cola, the Ornithorhynchus, the Emu, and several others that are found in no other country; how did they, leaving the continent altogether, convey themselves to this their appointed abode? It is true the difficulty is not

so great in this last case, on account of the numerous islands interposed between Malacca, Cochin-china, &c. and the North Coast of New Holland, but then it is unaccountable, if the transit of these animals was gradually effected by natural causes, and following that of mankind from island to island, till they reached the country to which their range is now limited, that they should have left no remains of their race in the countries and islands which they must have traversed in their route; and those that would have accompanied man would be a different tribe of animals, more fitted to minister to his wants, so that with respect to these the difficulty still remains they could not have reached the country unless under the guidance of Providence, and the same power that accomplished their removal to that appointed for their residence, prevented their leaving any of their race in the regions through which they passed.

There is only one supposition that will enable us to account for the transport of these animals in a natural way, which is this, that immediately subsequent to the deluge, America and New Holland, and the various other islands that are inhabited by peculiar animals, were once connected with Asia and Africa, by the intervention of lands that have since been submerged. Plato, in his Timæus, relates a tradition concerning an island called Atlantis, which he describes as bigger than

Asia and Africa, situated before the pillars of Hercules, which after an earthquake was swallowed up by the sea. According to his statement, this account was given by the Egyptian priests at Sais, to Solon, the Athenian legislator. Catcott, in his history of the deluge, seems to give some credit to this tradition, and supposes that Phaleg took his name, not from the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the subsequent division of the earth amongst the families of the three sons of Noah, but from its division occasioned by the subsidence of this great island, by which the occidental were separated from the oriental countries of the globe. Philo Judæus speaks of this catastrophe in terms that imply he gave credit to it, as does also Tertullian; but it appears to me to rest on too uncertain a base, and to be too much mixed with evident fable and allegory, to claim full credit as a real fact in the history of our globe. Still that many violent convulsions have taken place since the deluge is generally supposed. Our own island is thought once to have formed part of the continent, Sicily to have been united to Italy, with many other instances mentioned by Pliny. It is equally probable that the islands of the Indian Archipelago were at one time joined to that part of Asia. Whether such disruptions from the continents were simultaneous, or took place at different periods, is uncertain ; but if such an event as the submersion of the

vast island of Plato did really happen, it surely would affect the whole terraqueous globe, produce convulsions far and wide, and cause various disruptions in its crust, and elevations in other parts from the bed of the ocean. It throws some weight into this scale, that thus a way would be open, though certainly a circuitous one, for the migration of those animals to America, that are found in no other part of the world, and, supposing Asia to have been disrupted from it at Behrings Straits, could scarcely have ascended to so high a latitude, in search of their destined home.

Malte-brun, in his geography, after proving that the animals in question could have passed neither from Africa nor Asia, observes-"Nothing, therefore, remains, but the accommodating resource of a tremendous convulsion of nature, with a vast tract of country swallowed up by the waves, which formerly united America with the temperate regions of the old world. Such conjectures as these, however, being devoid of all historical support, do not merit a moment's consideration; consequently we cannot refrain from admitting, that the animals of America originated on the very soil, which, to this present day, they still inhabit."

That it might have been the will of the Creator to people the country in question by the immediate production of a new race of animals, suited