five; ruminantia, or
cud-chewers, one hundred and seventy-seven; pachydermata, or
thick-skinned mammals, such as the horse, hog, and elephant, forty-one;
edentata, like the sloth and ant-eater, thirty-five; rodentia, or
gnawers, such as the rat, squirrel, and beaver, six hundred and
seventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six;
cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, or
monkeys, two hundred and twenty-one; and marsupialia, or pouched
mammals, like the opossum and kangaroo, one hundred and thirty-seven. If
we leave out the cetacea, that live in the water, and the cud-chewers,
which are the clean beasts, we have one thousand eight hundred and
twenty-five species; and male and female of these, a total of three
thousand six hundred and fifty.

But, besides these, there were to be taken into the ark fourteen of
every kind of clean beast. And what are clean beasts? The scriptural
answer is, animals that divide the hoof and chew the cud; and of these
at least one hundred and seventy-seven species are known. Fourteen of
each of these added, make a total of six thousand one hundred and
twenty-eight mammals, from the mouse to the elephant. These beasts could
not be piled one upon another like cord-wood; they could not be
promiscuously crowded together. The sheep would need careful protection
from the lions, tigers, and wolves; the elephant and other ponderous
beasts would require stalls of great thickness; much room would be
required to enable them to obtain needful exercise, and for the
attendants to supply them with food and water; and a vessel of the size
of the ark would be taxed to provide for these beasts alone; and to
crowd in, and preserve alive, beasts and birds, was an absolute
impossibility.

But there are of reptiles six hundred and fifty-seven species; and Noah
was to take into the ark two of every sort of creeping thing. Two
hundred of these reptiles are, however, aquatic: hence water would not
seriously affect them; but crocodiles, lizards, iguanas, tree-frogs,
horned frogs, thunder-snakes, chicken-snakes, brittlesnakes,
rattlesnakes, copperheads, asps, cobras de capello, whose bite is
certain death, and a host of others, must be provided for. It would not
do to allow these disagreeable individuals to crawl about the ark; and
nine hundred and fourteen of them would require considerable space,
whether they could obtain it or not.

By this time, the ark is doubly cro