er, and this
would render it utterly unfit for drink. Provision must therefore have
been made for water; and a space certainly half as large as the ark must
have been taken up for the water necessary for this immense multitude.

_The fish, mollusks, crustaceans (such as our crabs and lobsters), and
all corals, must have died if such a flood had taken place_,--the
fresh-water fish from the salt water at once added to their proper
element, and the salt-water fish and other marine forms from so large an
addition of fresh water. For months, there could have been no shore:
what is now the margin of the sea was buried miles deep; and all the
fucoidal vegetation, upon which myriads of animals subsist, must have
perished, and the animals with it, if the change in the constitution of
the water had not killed them. Every time a man swallows an oyster, he
has evidence that the Noachian deluge did not take place.

_The plants must have perished also._ How many of our trees, to say
nothing of the grasses and feeble plants, could endure a soaking of
nearly twelve months' duration? Some of the very hardiest seeds might
survive, but the number could not be large. The present condition of
vegetation upon the globe is another evidence, then, that this deluge
did not take place.

_When the ark landed on Mount Ararat, and the animals went forth, how
did they subsist?_ As they went down the mountains, the carnivorous
animals would have devoured a large portion of the herbivorous animals
saved in the ark. Beside the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces, and other
carnivorous mammals, amounting to eight hundred and ninety-two, there
were in the ark six hundred and sixty-six eagles, for there are
forty-eight species; one hundred and forty-four buzzards, fourteen
hundred and forty-two falcons, one hundred and forty hawks, two hundred
and thirty-eight vultures, and eight hundred and ninety six owls. What
chance would a few sheep, rabbits and squirrels, rats and mice, doves
and chickens, have, among this ravenous multitude? How could the ants
escape, with ant-eaters, aard-varks and pangolins on the watch for them
as soon as they made their appearance? There were as many dogs as hares,
as many cats as mice. How long a lease of life could the sheep, hares,
and mice, calculate upon? Before the herbivorous animals had multiplied,
so as to furnish the carnivorous animals with food, they must all have
been destroyed, after all the pains taken for their pr