lies. For if each of all the constituent species of a genus, and
even of a family, were separately created, we must hence conclude that
in depositing them there was an unaccountable design manifested to make
areas of distribution correspond to the natural affinities of their
inhabitants. For example, the humming-birds are geographically
restricted to America, and number 120 genera, comprising over 400
species. Hence, if this betokens 400 separate acts of creation, it
cannot possibly have been due to chance that they were all performed on
the same continent: it must have been design which led to every species
of this large family of birds having been deposited in one geographical
area. Or, to take a case where only the species of a single genus are
concerned. The rats and mice proper constitute a genus which comprises
altogether more than 100 species, and they are all exclusively
restricted to the Old World. In the New World they are represented by
another genus comprising about 70 species, which resemble their Old
World cousins in form and habits; but differ from them in dentition and
other such minor points. Now, the question is,--Why should all the 100
species have been separately created on one side of the Atlantic with
one pattern of dentition, and all the 70 species on the other side with
another pattern? What has the Atlantic Ocean got to do with any
"archetypal plan" of rats' teeth?

Or again, to recur to Australia, why should all the mammalian forms of
life be restricted to the one group of Marsupials, when we know that not
only the Rodents, such as the rabbit, but all other orders of mammals,
would thrive there equally well. And similarly, of course, in countless
other instances. Everywhere we meet with this same correlation between
areas of distribution and affinities of classification.

Now, it is at once manifest how completely this general fact harmonizes
with the theory of evolution. If the 400 species of humming-birds, for
instance, are all modified descendants of common ancestors, and if none
of their constituent individuals have ever been large enough to make
their way across the oceans which practically isolate their territory
from all other tropical and sub-tropical regions of the globe, then we
can understand why it is that all the 400 species occupy the same
continent. But on the special-creation theory we can see no reason why
the 400 species should all have been deposited in America. And, as
alre