eservation. Noah
should have given the herbivora, at least a year's start, especially
since the vegetation of the globe was so deficient.

But we are told that the species of animals may have been much fewer in
the days of Noah; and, therefore, much less room would be necessary. A
single pair of cats, say some, may have produced all the animals of the
cat kind; a pair of dogs, all the animals that belong to the dog family.
Such an explanation might have been given when zoology was little known,
and geology had no existence; but there is no place for it now. Animals
change, it is true, and all species have probably been produced from a
few originals; but the process by which this is accomplished is so slow
in its operation, that we have no knowledge of the formation of a new
species. We know that lions, tigers, and cats of various species,
existed long before the time of the deluge, and dogs, wolves and foxes;
and we find mummied cats, dogs, and other animals in Egypt, as old or
older than the deluge, so little changed from those of the present time
in the same locality, that we cannot recognize any difference between
them.

_"You seem to forget that all things are possible with God: he could
have packed these animals into an ark of one-half the size, brought them
altogether in the twinkling of an eye, and returned them as rapidly."_

And you seem to forget that the account in Genesis gives us no hint of
any such miracle. Noah was to take the animals to him, and to take unto
him of all food that is eaten; and, as Hugh Miller remarks, "the
expedient of having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to get
over a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not of
the nature of an argument, but simply an evidence of the want of it.
Argument is at an end when supposititious miracle is introduced." But,
if a miracle was worked, it was not one, but ten thousand of the most
stupendous miracles, and entirely unnecessary ones. This, the Rev. Dr.
Pye Smith saw, when he said, "We cannot represent to ourselves the idea
of all land animals 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 Chri