with three
stories, and furnished with one door, and one window a cubit wide. Into
this ark were to be taken two of every sort of living thing, and of
clean beasts and of birds seven of every sort, male and female, and food
sufficient for them all.

There are differences of opinion about the length of the cubit: most
probably it was about eighteen inches; but taking it at twenty-two
inches, the largest estimate that I believe theologians have made, the
ark was then five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety-one feet eight
inches broad, and fifty-five feet high. Leaving space for the floors,
which would need to be very strong, each story was about seventeen feet
high; and the total cubical contents of the ark were about one hundred
and two thousand cubic yards. Scott, in his commentary, makes it as
small as sixty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty yards; but the
necessity for room was not as well understood in his day. Each floor of
the ark contained five thousand six hundred and one square yards, and
the three floors sixteen thousand eight hundred and three square yards,
the total standing-room of the ark.

Into this were to be taken fourteen of each kind of fowl of the air or
bird. How many kinds or species of birds are there? When Adam Clarke
wrote his commentary, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two species
had been recognized. Ornithology was then but in its infancy, and man's
knowledge of living forms was very limited. Lesson, according to Hugh
Miller, enumerates the birds at six thousand two hundred and sixty-six
species; Gray, in his "Genera of Birds," estimates the number on the
globe at eight thousand. Let us not crowd Noah, but take the six
thousand two hundred and sixty-six species of Lesson. Fourteen of each
of these would give us eighty-seven thousand seven hundred and
twenty-four birds,--from the humming-bird, the little flying jewel, to
the ostrich that fans the heated air of the desert,--or over five for
every yard of standing-room in the ark. If spaces were left for the
attendants to pass among them, to attend to the supply of their daily
wants, the birds alone would crowd the ark.

But, beside the birds, there were to be taken into the ark two of every
sort of unclean beast and fourteen of every sort of clean beast. The
most recent zoological authorities enumerate two thousand and
sixty-seven species of mammals, or, as they are commonly called, beasts.
Of cetacea, or whale-like mammals, sixty-