lude that all animals and plants have spread from certain local
centres of creation, in which certain groups of species have been
produced and allowed to extend themselves, until they met and became
intermingled with species extending from other centres. Now the
district of Asia, in the vicinity of the Euphrates and Tigris, to
which the Scripture assigns the origin of the human race, is the
centre to which we can with the greatest probability trace several of
the species of animals and plants most useful to man, and it lies near
the confines of warmer and colder regions of distribution in the Old
World, and also near the boundary of the Asiatic and European regions.
At the period under consideration it may have been peopled with a
group of animals specially suited to association with the progenitors
of mankind. 2. To remove all zoological difficulties from the position
of primeval man in his state of innocence, we have but to suppose, in
accordance with all the probabilities of the case, that man was
created along with a group of creatures adapted to contribute to his
happiness, and having no tendency to injure or annoy; and that it is
the formation of these creatures--the group of his own centre of
creation--that is especially noticed in Genesis ii., 19, _et seq._,
where God is represented as forming them out of the ground and
exhibiting them to Adam; a passage otherwise superfluous, and indeed
tending to confuse the meaning of the document. 3. The difficulty
attending the early extension of the human race is at once obviated by
the geological doctrine of the extinction of species. We know that in
past geological periods large and important groups of species have
become extinct, and have been replaced by new groups extending from
new centres; and we know that this process has removed, in early
geological periods, many creatures that would have been highly
injurious to human interests had they remained. Now the group of
species created with man being the latest introduced, we may infer, on
geological grounds, that it would have extended itself within the
spheres of older zoological and botanical districts, and would have
replaced their species, which, in the ordinary operation of natural
laws, may have been verging toward extinction. Thus not only man, but
the Eden in which he dwelt, with all its animals and plants, would
have gradually encroached on the surrounding wilderness, until man's
happy and peaceful reign had re