, we may well ask, 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 been surely far beyond the power
of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew,
the dormouse, and the field-vole.

Dr. Pye Smith, in dealing with this subject, has emphatically said, that
"all land animals having their geographical regions, to which their
constitutional 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 the final disposal of them,--without bringing up the
idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in
Scripture. The great decisive miracle of Christianity," he adds,--"the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus,--sinks down before it." And let us
remember that the preservation and redistribution of the land animals
would demand but a portion of the amount of miracle absolutely necessary
for the preservation, in the circumstances, of the entire fauna of the
globe. The fresh water fishes, molluscs, crustacea, and zoophytes, could
be kept alive in a universal deluge only by miraculous means. It has
been urged that, though the living individuals were to perish, their
spawn might be preserved by natural means. It must be remembered,
however, that even of some fishes whose proper habitat is the sea, such
as the salmon, it is essential for the maintenance of the species that
the spawn should be deposited in fresh water, nay, in running fresh
water; for in still water, however pure, the eggs in a few weeks addle
and die. The eggs of the common trout also require to be deposited in
running fresh water; while other fresh water fishes, such as the tench
and carp, are reared most successfully in still, reedy ponds. The fresh
water fishes spawn, too, at very different seasons, and the young remain
for very different periods in the egg. The