perch and grayling spawn in
the end of April or the beginning of May; the tench and roach about the
middle of June; the common trout and powan in October and November. And
while some fishes, such as the salmon, remain from ninety to a hundred
days in the egg, others, such as the trout, are extruded in five weeks.
Without special miracle the spawn of all the fresh water fishes could
not be in existence _as such_ at one and the same time; without special
miracle it could not maintain its vitality in a universal deluge; and
without special miracle, even did it maintain its vitality, it could not
remain in the egg state throughout an entire twelvemonth, but would be
developed into fishes of the several species to which it belonged at
very different periods. Further, in a universal deluge, without special
miracle vast numbers of even the salt water animals could not fail to be
extirpated; in particular, almost all the molluscs of the littoral and
laminarian zones. Nor would the vegetable kingdom fare greatly better
than the animal one. Of the one hundred thousand species of known
plants, few indeed would survive submersion for a twelvemonth; nor would
the seeds of most of the others fare better than the plants themselves.
There are certain hardy seeds that in favorable circumstances maintain
their vitality for ages; and there are others, strongly encased in
water-tight shells or skins, that have floated across oceans to
germinate in distant islands; but such, as every florist knows, is not
the general character of seeds; and not until after many unsuccessful
attempts, and many expedients had been resorted to, have the more
delicate kinds been brought uninjured, even on shipboard, from distant
countries to our own. It is not too much to hold that, without special
miracle, at least three fourths of the terrestrial vegetation of the
globe would have perished in a universal deluge that covered over the
dry land for a year. Assuredly the various vegetable centres or
regions,--estimated by Schouw at twenty-five,--bear witness to no such
catastrophe. Still distinct and unbroken, as of old, either no effacing
flood has passed over them, or they were shielded from its effects at an
expense of miracle many times more considerable than that at which the
Jews were brought out of Egypt and preserved amid the nations, or
Christianity itself was ultimately established.[30]

There is, however, a class of learned and thoroughly respectable
t