rodents, and marsupials--could
not have required less than four thousand five hundred tons; making a
total of five thousand eight hundred and fifty tons. A ton of hay
occupies about eighteen cubic yards; and the quantity of hay required
would fill a hundred and five thousand three hundred cubic yards of
space, or more than the entire capacity of the ark.

If these animals were fed on other substances than hay, the extra
difficulty of obtaining and preserving those substances would
counterbalance any advantage that might be gained by the economy of
space.

A vast quantity of grain would be necessary for thousands of birds,
rodents, marsupials, and other animals; and large granaries would be
required for its storage.

What flesh would be needed for the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces,
wild-cats, wolves, bears, hyenas, jackals, dogs, and foxes, martens,
weasels, eagles, condors, vultures, buzzards, falcons, hawks, kites,
owls, as well as crocodiles and serpents! Not one but would eat its
weight in a month, and some much more. A full-grown lion eats fifteen
pounds of flesh in a day: there are two species of lions; and the four
would eat twenty-two thousand pounds in a year. There would be, at
least, three thousand animals feeding upon flesh; and, if we calculate
that they averaged two pounds of flesh a day, this would give a total of
more than two million and a quarter pounds of flesh to be stored up and
distributed. And since dried, salted, or smoked meat would not answer,
this flesh must have been taken into the ark alive. It would be equal to
more than thirty thousand sheep at seventy-five pounds each; a great
addition to the original cargo, and necessitating an extra quantity of
hay for their food, till their turn came to be eaten.

Fish would be required for the otters, minks, pelicans, of which there
are eight species, and must therefore have been fifty-six individuals in
the ark; one hundred and five gulls, for there are fifteen species; one
hundred and twelve cormorants, forty-nine gannets, one hundred and forty
terns, two hundred and eighty-seven kingfishers, beside storks, herons,
spoonbills, penguins, albatrosses, and a host of others; mollusks for
the oyster-catcher, turnstone, and other birds.

The fish could not be preserved after death in any way to answer for
food, and must therefore have been alive: large tanks for the purpose of
keeping them would take up considerable of the ark's space. The water in