_ four, at least twelve, or more
probably fourteen, animals of the genus would require, on the hypothesis
of a universal deluge, to have been accommodated in the ark. Buffon even
held that the bison of America might be identical with not simply the
auroch of Europe, which it closely resembles, but with even the European
ox, which it does _not_ resemble. But it is now known, that while the
European aurochs are provided by nature with but fourteen pairs of ribs,
the American bison is furnished with fifteen. Of each of the ruminants
that divide the hoof, there were _seven_ introduced into the ark; and it
may be well to mark how, even during the last few years, our
acquaintance with this order of animals has been growing, and how
greatly the known species, in their relation to human knowledge, have in
consequence increased. In 1848 (in the first edition of the "Physical
Atlas") Mr. Waterhouse estimated the oxen at thirteen species; in 1856
(in the second edition) he estimates them at twenty. In 1848 he
estimated the sheep at twenty-one species; in 1856 he estimates them at
twenty-seven. In 1848 he estimated the goats at fourteen species; in
1856 he estimates them at twenty. In 1846 he estimated the deer at
thirty-eight species; in 1856 he estimates them at fifty-one. In short,
if, excluding the lamas and the musks as doubtfully _clean_, tried by
the Mosaic test, we but add to the sheep, goats, deer, and cattle, the
forty-eight species of unequivocally _clean_ antelopes, and multiply the
whole by seven, we shall have as the result a sum total of one thousand
one hundred and sixty-two individuals,--a number more than four times
greater than that for which Raleigh made provision in the ark, and
considerably more than twice greater than that provided for by the
students of Buffon. Such is the nature and amount of the increase which
has taken place during the last half century in the mammaliferous fauna.
In so great a majority of cases has it increased its _bulk_ in the ratio
in which it has increased its numbers, that if one ark was not deemed
more than sufficient to accommodate the animal world known to the French
naturalist of eighty years ago, it would require at least from five to
six arks to accommodate the animal world known in the present day.

Even in the days of Buffon, however, and at a still earlier period, the
ark, regarded as a natural means of preservation from death by
_drowning_, was usually coupled, in the case