THE DELUGE

 IN THE

 LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE. 

 A Discourse. 

 BY WILLIAM DENTON. 

 WELLESLEY, MASS. : DENTON PUBLISHING COMPANY. 1882. 

THE DELUGE IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SCIENCE. 

If the Bible is God's book, we ought to know it. If the Creator of theuniverse has spoken to man, how important that we should listen to hisvoice and obey his instructions! On the other hand, if the Bible is notGod's book, we ought to know it. Why should we go through the world witha lie in our right hand, dupes of the ignorant men who preceded us? Itcan never be for our soul's benefit to cherish a falsehood. 

Science is, perhaps, the best test that we can apply to decide thequestion. Science is really a knowledge of what Nature has done, and isdoing; and since the upholders of the divinity of the Bible believe thatit proceeded from the Author of nature, if their faith is true, itcannot possibly disagree with what science teaches. 

Science is a fiery furnace, that has consumed a thousand delusions, andmust consume all that remain. We cast into it astrology and alchemy, andtheir ashes barely remain to tell of their existence. Old notions of theearth and heavens went in, and vanished as their dupes gazed upon them. Old religions, old gods, have become as the incense that was burnedbefore their altars. 

I purpose to try the Bible in its searching fire. Fear not, my brother:it can but burn the straw and stubble; if gold, it will shine as brightafter the fiery ordeal as before, and reflect as perfectly the image oftruth. 

The Bible abounds with marvellous stories, --stories that we should atonce reject from their intrinsic improbability, not to sayimpossibility, if we should find them in any other book. But, among allthe stories, there is none that equals the account of the deluge, asgiven in the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters of Genesis. It towersabove the rest as Mount Washington does above the New-England hills;and, as travellers delight to climb the loftiest peaks, I suppose thatmany would be pleased to examine this lofty story, and see how the worldof truth and actuality looks from its summit. 

According to the account, in less than two thousand years after God hadcreated all things, and pronounced them very good, he became thoroughlydissatisfied with every living thing, and determined to destroy themwith the earth. He thus expresses himself: "I will destroy man, whom Ihave created, from the face of the earth, --both man and beast, and thecreeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that Ihave made them. " Again he says to Noah, "The end of all flesh is comebefore me; for the earth is filled with violence through them, andbehold I will destroy them with the earth. "

Why should the beasts, birds, and creeping things be destroyed? What hadthe larks, the doves, and the bob-o-links done? What had the squirrelsand the tortoises been guilty of, that they should be destroyed?

He proceeds to inform Noah how he will do this: "And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, whereinis the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in theearth shall die. " And we are subsequently informed that "every thingthat was in the dry land died. " But why not every thing in the sea? Werethe dogs sinners, and the dog-fish saints? Had the sheep been moreguilty than the sharks? Had the pigeons become utterly corrupt, and thepikes remained perfectly innocent? It may be, that the apparentimpossibility of drowning them by a flood suggested to the writer of thestory the necessity of saving them alive. 

But Noah was righteous; and God determined to save him and his family, eight persons, and by their instrumentality to save alive animalssufficient to stock the world again after its destruction. 

To do this, Noah was commanded to build an ark, three hundred cubitslong, fifty broad, and thirty high. It was to be made with threestories, and furnished with one door, and one window a cubit wide. Intothis ark were to be taken two of every sort of living thing, and ofclean beasts and of birds seven of every sort, male and female, and foodsufficient for them all. 

There are differences of opinion about the length of the cubit: mostprobably it was about eighteen inches; but taking it at twenty-twoinches, the largest estimate that I believe theologians have made, theark was then five hundred and fifty feet long, ninety-one feet eightinches broad, and fifty-five feet high. Leaving space for the floors, which would need to be very strong, each story was about seventeen feethigh; and the total cubical contents of the ark were about one hundredand two thousand cubic yards. Scott, in his commentary, makes it assmall as sixty-nine thousand one hundred and twenty yards; but thenecessity for room was not as well understood in his day. Each floor ofthe ark contained five thousand six hundred and one square yards, andthe 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 orbird. How many kinds or species of birds are there? When Adam Clarkewrote his commentary, two thousand three hundred and seventy-two specieshad been recognized. Ornithology was then but in its infancy, and man'sknowledge of living forms was very limited. Lesson, according to HughMiller, enumerates the birds at six thousand two hundred and sixty-sixspecies; Gray, in his "Genera of Birds, " estimates the number on theglobe at eight thousand. Let us not crowd Noah, but take the sixthousand two hundred and sixty-six species of Lesson. Fourteen of eachof these would give us eighty-seven thousand seven hundred andtwenty-four birds, --from the humming-bird, the little flying jewel, tothe ostrich that fans the heated air of the desert, --or over five forevery yard of standing-room in the ark. If spaces were left for theattendants to pass among them, to attend to the supply of their dailywants, the birds alone would crowd the ark. 

But, beside the birds, there were to be taken into the ark two of everysort of unclean beast and fourteen of every sort of clean beast. Themost recent zoölogical authorities enumerate two thousand andsixty-seven species of mammals, or, as they are commonly called, beasts. Of cetacea, or whale-like mammals, sixty-five; ruminantia, orcud-chewers, one hundred and seventy-seven; pachydermata, orthick-skinned mammals, such as the horse, hog, and elephant, forty-one;edentata, like the sloth and ant-eater, thirty-five; rodentia, orgnawers, such as the rat, squirrel, and beaver, six hundred andseventeen; carnivora, or flesh-eaters, four hundred and forty-six;cheiroptera, or bats, three hundred and twenty-eight; quadrumana, ormonkeys, two hundred and twenty-one; and marsupialia, or pouchedmammals, like the opossum and kangaroo, one hundred and thirty-seven. Ifwe leave out the cetacea, that live in the water, and the cud-chewers, which are the clean beasts, we have one thousand eight hundred andtwenty-five species; and male and female of these, a total of threethousand six hundred and fifty. 

But, besides these, there were to be taken into the ark fourteen ofevery kind of clean beast. And what are clean beasts? The scripturalanswer is, animals that divide the hoof and chew the cud; and of theseat least one hundred and seventy-seven species are known. Fourteen ofeach of these added, make a total of six thousand one hundred andtwenty-eight mammals, from the mouse to the elephant. These beasts couldnot be piled one upon another like cord-wood; they could not bepromiscuously crowded together. The sheep would need careful protectionfrom the lions, tigers, and wolves; the elephant and other ponderousbeasts would require stalls of great thickness; much room would berequired to enable them to obtain needful exercise, and for theattendants to supply them with food and water; and a vessel of the sizeof the ark would be taxed to provide for these beasts alone; and tocrowd in, and preserve alive, beasts and birds, was an absoluteimpossibility. 

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

By this time, the ark is doubly crowded; but its living cargo is not yetcompleted. A dense cloud of insects, and a vast army destitute of wings, make their appearance, and clamor for admission. The number ofarticulates that must have been provided for is estimated at sevenhundred and fifty thousand species, --from the butterflies of Brazil, fourteen inches from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, to thealmost invisible gnat, that dances in the summer's beam. Ants, beetles, flies, bugs, fleas, mosquitoes, wasps, bees, moths, butterflies, spiders, scorpions, grasshoppers, locusts, myriapods, canker-worms, wriggling, crawling, creeping, flying, male and female, here they come, and all must be provided for. 

Nor are these the last. The air-breathing land-snails, of which we knowfour thousand six hundred species, could never have survived a twelvemonths' soaking; and they must therefore be cared for. The nine thousandtwo hundred of these add no little to the discomfort of thetrebly-crowded ark. 

Now let the flood come: all are lodged in the ark of safety, and areready for a year's voyage. But we forget: the ark has not yet receivedone-half of its cargo. The command given unto Noah was, "Take thou untothee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and itshall be for food for thee and for them;" and we are expressly told that"according to all that God commanded Noah, so did he. "

Food for how long? The flood began in the "sixth hundredth year ofNoah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month. "Noah, his family, and the animals, went in seven days before this time, and left the ark the six hundred and first year of Noah's life, thesecond month, and the twenty-seventh day of the month. They weretherefore in the ark for one year and seventeen days. 

What a quantity of hay would be required, the material most easilyobtained! An elephant eats four hundred pounds of hay in twenty-fourhours. Since there are two species of elephants, the African and theIndian, there must have been four elephants in the ark; and, supposingthem to live upon hay, they would require three hundred tons. There areat least seven species of the rhinoceros; and fourteen of these, atseventy-five tons each, would consume no less than one thousand andfifty tons. The two thousand four hundred and seventy-eight cleanbeasts, --oxen, elk, giraffes, camels, deer, antelope, sheep, goats, withthe horses, zebras, asses, hippopotami, rodents, and marsupials--couldnot have required less than four thousand five hundred tons; making atotal of five thousand eight hundred and fifty tons. A ton of hayoccupies about eighteen cubic yards; and the quantity of hay requiredwould fill a hundred and five thousand three hundred cubic yards ofspace, or more than the entire capacity of the ark. 

If these animals were fed on other substances than hay, the extradifficulty of obtaining and preserving those substances wouldcounterbalance any advantage that might be gained by the economy ofspace. 

A vast quantity of grain would be necessary for thousands of birds, rodents, marsupials, and other animals; and large granaries would berequired 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 itsweight in a month, and some much more. A full-grown lion eats fifteenpounds of flesh in a day: there are two species of lions; and the fourwould eat twenty-two thousand pounds in a year. There would be, atleast, three thousand animals feeding upon flesh; and, if we calculatethat they averaged two pounds of flesh a day, this would give a total ofmore than two million and a quarter pounds of flesh to be stored up anddistributed. And since dried, salted, or smoked meat would not answer, this flesh must have been taken into the ark alive. It would be equal tomore than thirty thousand sheep at seventy-five pounds each; a greataddition to the original cargo, and necessitating an extra quantity ofhay for their food, till their turn came to be eaten. 

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

The fish could not be preserved after death in any way to answer forfood, and must therefore have been alive: large tanks for the purpose ofkeeping them would take up considerable of the ark's space. The water insuch tanks would soon become unfitted for the respiration of the fish, and there must have been some provision, by air-pumps or otherwise, forcharging the water with the air essential to their existence. 

Many animals live upon insects; and this must have been the mostdifficult part of the provision to procure. There are nineteen speciesof goatsuckers; and there must have been in the ark two hundred andsixty-six individuals. These birds feed upon flies, moths, beetles, andother insects. What an innumerable multitude must have been provided forthe goatsuckers alone! But there are a hundred and thirty-seven speciesof fly-catchers; and Noah must have had a fly-catcher family of nineteenhundred and eighteen individuals to supply with appropriate food. Thereare thirty-seven species of bee-eaters; and there must have been fivehundred and eighteen of these birds to supply with bees. A very largeapiary would be required to supply their needs. But, beside these, insects for swallows, swifts, martins, shrikes, thrushes, orioles, sparrows, the beautiful trogans and jacamars, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, and a multitude of others, too numerous to mention, but not too numerousto eat. Ants, also, for the ant-eaters of America, the aard-vark ofAfrica, and the pangolin of Asia. The great ant-eater of South Americais an animal sometimes measuring eight feet in length. It livesexclusively on ants, which it procures by tearing open their hills withits hooked claws, and then drawing its long tongue, which is coveredwith glutinous saliva, over the swarms which rush out to defend theirdwelling. Many bushels of ants would be needed for the pair ofant-eaters before the ark landed on Ararat. How were all the insectscaught, and kept for the use of all these animals for more than a year?A hundred men could not catch a sufficient number in six months. And, ifcaught, how could they be preserved, together with the original stock ofinsects necessary to supply the world after the deluge? Some insects eatonly bark; others, resinous secretions, the pith, solid wood, leaves, sap in the veins, as the aphid, flowers, pollen, and honey. Wood, bark, resin, and honey might have been supplied; but how could green leaves, sap, flowers and pollen, be furnished to those insects absolutelyrequiring them for existence? Thirty species of insects feed on thenettle, but not one of them could live on dried nettles. Röselcalculates that two hundred species subsist on the oak; but the oak mustbe in a growing condition to supply them with food. In no other way, then, could the insects have been preserved alive than by largegreen-houses, the heat so applied as to suit the plants of bothtemperate and tropical climates, and the insects so distributed amongthem, that each could obtain its appropriate nourishment. 

Fruit would be necessary for the four hundred and forty-two monkeys, forthe plantain-eaters, the fruit-pigeons of the Spice Islands that feed onnutmegs, for the toucans and the flocks of parrots, parroquets, cockatoos, and other fruit-eating birds. As they did not know how to canfruit in those days, and dried fruit would be altogether unsuitable, there must have been a large green-house for raising all manner of fruitnecessary for the frugivorous multitude. 

_How were the various animals obtained?_ The command given to Noah was, "Two of every sort shalt thou _bring_ into the ark. "

Animals, as is now well known, belong to limited centres, outside ofwhich they are never found in a natural state; and naturalists know thatthese centres were established ages before the time when the deluge issupposed to have occurred. 

Thus, Hugh Miller, in his "Testimony of the Rocks, " says, "We now knowthat every great continent has its own peculiar fauna; that the originalcentres of distribution must have been, not one, but many; further, thatthe areas or circles around these centres must have been occupied bytheir pristine animals in ages long anterior to that of the NoachianDeluge; nay, that in even the latter geologic ages they were preceded inthem by animals of the same general type. There are fourteen such areas, or provinces, enumerated by the later naturalists;" and Cuvier, quotedby Miller, says, "The great continents contain species peculiar to each;insomuch, that whenever large countries, of this description, have beendiscovered, which their situation had kept isolated from the rest of theworld, the class of quadrupeds which they contained has been foundextremely different from any that had existed elsewhere. Thus, when theSpaniards first penetrated into South America, they did not find asingle species of quadruped the same as any of Europe, Asia, or Africa. "

The white bear is never found except in the arctic regions; the greatgrizzly bear is only found in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains. Nearly all the species of mammals found in Australia are confined tothat country, as the wingless birds of New Zealand are confined to that, and the sloth, armadillo, and other animals, to South America. 

A journey to the polar regions would be necessary to obtain the whitebear, the musk-ox, of which seven would be required, since it is a cleanbeast; seven reindeer, likewise; the white fox, the polar hare, thelemming, and seven of each species of cormorant, gannet, penguin, petrel, and gull, some of which are as large as eagles, as well asmergansers, geese, and ducks, certain species of which are only found inthe frigid zone. Noah or his agents must have discovered Greenland andNorth America thousands of years before Columbus was born: they musthave preceded Behring, Parry, Ross, Kane, and Hayes in exploring theArctic regions. They searched the ice-floes and numerous islands of theArctic seas, snow-shoed, over the frozen _tundras_ of Siberia, to becertain that no living thing escaped them; then, after catching andcaging all the animals, conveyed them, with all manner of food necessaryfor their sustenance, together with ice to temper the heat of theclimate to which they were for more than a year to be exposed, returnedto the nearest port, and, after a toilsome journey from the sea-coast toArmenia, arrived at their destination. How many of these animals wouldsurvive the journey? and, of those that did, how many would survive thechange of climate and habits?

Another party must have visited temperate America; traversed New Englandin its length and breadth, forded wide streams, made their way throughunbroken wildernesses, traversed the Great Lakes, roamed over the RockyMountains, and secured the black bear, cinnamon bear, wapiti or Canadianstag, the moose, American deer, antelope, mountain sheep, buffalo, opossum, rattlesnake, copperhead, and an innumerable multitude of otheranimals--insects birds, reptiles, and mammals, that are only to be foundin the temperate regions of America. 

A voyage to South America must have been made to obtain tapirs, pumas, peccaries, sloths, ant-eaters, armadillos, fourteen each of the llama, alpaca, and vicuna, beside monkeys, birds, and insects innumerable. Avessel nearly as large as "The Great Eastern" must have been employed, or a number of smaller ones, to accommodate the collectors, the animals, and food for a voyage across the Atlantic. There must have been, atleast, a thousand men, wandering through the woods of Brazil, along thevalley of the Amazon, the Orinoco, and the La Plata; paddling up thestreams, scaling the mountains, roaming over the pampas, climbing thetall trees, turning over every stone and log, and exploring every nook, to discover the snails, bugs, insects, worms, reptiles, and otheranimals indigenous to South America, from the Isthmus toTierra-del-fuego. 

There must have been obtained four elephants, for there are two species, the Asiatic and the Indian; fourteen rhinoceroses, one of which is foundonly in South Africa, another in the island of Java, and a third inSumatra; two hippopotami, and possibly four, for some authorities saythere are two species. Fourteen giraffes, since they are clean beasts, must have been caught and driven from Central Africa (many more, indeed, must have been caught, that the required number might reach the ark andbe preserved); twenty-eight camels, two hundred and eighty oxen (forthere are twenty species, and they are clean); and no less than thirteenhundred and eighty-six deer and antelope, of which there are ninety-ninespecies recognized: these to be collected in various parts of Europe, Asia, Northern and Southern Africa, and America. 

New Zealand must have been visited to obtain its wingless birds;Mauritius for its dodo, then living; Australia for its marsupials andother peculiar animals; and every large island, and most of the smallones, to obtain those forms of life that are only to be found in each. From the island of Celebes, they must have taken the eighty species ofbirds that are confined to it, which would require them to catch, cage, feed, and convey eleven hundred and twenty specimens: a no small job ofitself. Ten men that could accomplish that, and carry them safe toArmenia, would do all that men could do in ten years. From thePhilippine Islands, the seventy-three species of hawks, parrots, andpigeons, peculiar to them; which would require, since fourteen of everykind of bird were to be taken into the ark, no less than one thousandand twenty-two specimens. From New Guinea, and the neighboring islands, two hundred and fifty-two of the magnificent birds of paradise, sincethere are eighteen species. 

A faint idea of the difficulties encountered and overcome by Noah'sagents may be gathered from what Wallace, in his recent work on theMalay Archipelago, informs us respecting these birds of paradise. "Fivevoyages to different parts of the district they inhabit, each occupyingin its preparation and execution the larger part of a year, produced meonly five species out of the fourteen known to exist in the New-Guineadistrict. " If it took Wallace, with all the assistance that he had fromvarious officials, five years to obtain five species, represented bydead birds, how long did it take Noah's agents to obtain eighteenspecies represented by two hundred and fifty-two live birds? Wallacecould only obtain two alive, and for these he had to pay five hundreddollars. 

If the antediluvian sinners were any thing like the modern ones, Noahmust have been richer than the Rothschilds, or he never could haveobtained their services; which he must have done, or it could never betruthfully said, "according to all that God commanded him, so did he. "

The collection of the land-snails alone would be no small tax. Seventy-four are peculiar to Great Britain: hence there must have been ahundred and forty-eight snails collected from that island. Six hundredspecies are found in Southern Europe alone, and twelve hundred must havebeen collected from there; eighty in Sicily, ten in Corsica, two hundredand sixty-four in the Madeira Islands, a hundred and twenty in theCanary Islands, twenty-six in St. Helena, sixty-three in SouthernAfrica, eighty-eight in Madagascar, a hundred and twelve in Ceylon, ahundred in New Zealand, and others on every large and some of the smallislands of the globe. The world must have been circumnavigated manytimes before the vessel of Magellan was built, and every island visitedand ransacked ages before the time of Captain Cook. But it seemssurprising, since these voyages must have been performed by the sinfulantediluvians, that they did not save themselves in their ships when theflood came; for vessels that could perform such voyages would certainlyhave survived the flood more readily than the clumsy ark. 

But was it really done? A thousand men in ten years, with all theappliances of modern art, --steamboats, railroads, canals, coaches, andexpress companies, --could not accomplish it in ten years; nor ten timesthe number of men keep all the animals alive in one spot for one year, if they were collected together. 

"But, " says the Christian, "Noah never did collect them: no intelligentperson in this day ever supposes that he did. " What then? "The Bibleexpressly declares that 'they went in unto Noah into the ark. ' Byinstinct, such as leads the swallow to take its distant flight at theapproach of winter, they came from all parts of the globe to the ark ofsafety. "

It is true that one account does say that they came in unto Noah, forthere are two very different stories of the deluge mixed up in thosechapters of Genesis; but, although flying birds might perform such afeat as going twelve thousand miles to the ark, which would be necessaryfor some, how could other animals get there? It would be impossible evenfor some birds. How could the ostriches of Africa, the emus ofAustralia, and the rheas of South America, get there, --birds that neverfly? There are three species of the rhea, or South-American ostrich; andforty-two of these would have a journey of eight thousand miles beforethem, by the shortest route: but how could they cross the Atlantic? Ifthey went by land, they must have traversed the length of the Americancontinent, from Patagonia to Alaska, crossed at Behring's Strait when itwas frozen, and then travelled diagonally across nearly the wholecontinent of Asia to Armenia, after a journey that must have requiredmany months for its completion. The sloths, that have been confined toSouth America ever since the pliocene period at least, must have takenthe same route. How they crossed the mountain streams, and lived whenpassing over broad prairies, it would be difficult to say. A mile a daywould be a rapid rate for these slow travellers, and it would thereforerequire about forty years for them to arrive at their destination. But, since the life of a sloth is not as long as this, they must havebequeathed their journey to their posterity, and they to theirdescendants, born on the way, who must have reached the ark before thedoor was closed. The land-snails must have met with still greaterdifficulties. Impelled by most wonderful instinct, they commenced theirjourney full a thousand years before the time; and their posterity ofthe five hundredth generation must have made their appearance, and beenprovided with a passage by the venerable Noah. 

Scott, who wrote a commentary on the Bible seventy or eighty years ago, must have seen some of these difficulties, though with nothing like theclearness with which science enables us to see them now. He says, "Theremust have been a very extraordinary miracle wrought, perhaps by theministration of angels, in bringing two of every species to Noah, andrendering them submissive to him and peaceable with each other; yet itseems not to have made any impression on the hardened spectators. "

Think of a troop of angels fly-catching, snail-seeking, and bug-huntingthrough all lands, lugging through the air, horses, giraffes, elephants, and rhinoceroses, and dropping them at the door of the ark. One hascrossed the Atlantic with rattlesnakes, copperheads, and boas twinedaround him, almost crippling his wings with their snaky folds; andanother with a brace of skunks, one under each wing, that the renewedworld may not lack the fragrance of the old. What a subject for thepencil of a Raphael or Doré! Had the "hardened spectators" beheld such ascene as this, Noah and his cargo would have been cast out of the ark, and the sinners themselves, converted by this stupendous miracle, wouldhave taken passage therein. 

Not only must there have been a succession of most stupendous miraclesto get the animals to the ark, but also to return them to their properplaces of abode. But few of them could have lived in the neighborhood ofArarat, had they been left there. How could the polar bear return to hishome among the ice-bergs, the sloths to the congenial forests of the NewWorld, and all the mammals, reptiles, insects, and snails to theirrespective habitats, the homes of their ancestors for ages innumerable?To return them was just as necessary as to obtain them, and, though lessdifficult, was equally impossible. 

_How could eight persons, all that were saved in the ark, attend to allthese animals!_ Nearly all would require food and water once a day, andmany twice. In a menagerie, one man takes care of four cages, --feeds, cleans, and waters the animals. In the ark, each person, women included, must have attended each day to ten thousand nine hundred and sixty-fourbirds, seven hundred and sixty-six beasts, one hundred and fourteenreptiles, one thousand one hundred and fifty land-snails, and onehundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred insects. 

Few persons have an idea of the difficulty of keeping even the commonbirds of a temperate climate alive in confinement for any length oftime. Food that is quite suitable in a wild state may be fatal to themwhen they are kept in the house. Linnets feed on winter rape-seed in thewild state, but soon die if fed upon it in-doors. "They are to be fed, "says Bechstein, "on summer rape-seed, moistened in water; and their foodmust be varied by the addition of millet, radish, cabbage, lettuce andplantain-seeds, and sometimes a few bruised melon-seeds or barberries. "Nightingales, he says, should be fed on meal, worms, and fresh ants'eggs: but, if it is not possible to get these, a mixture of hard egg, ox-heart minced, and white bread may be given; but this often kills thebirds. No such food would do for Noah's nightingales, then, or wherewould have been the nightingale's song? They must have been fed on meal, worms, and _fresh_ ant's eggs. How they were obtained, we have, ofcourse, no knowledge. Bechstein says that larks may be fed with "a pastemade of grated carrot, white bread soaked in water, and barley or wheatmeal, all worked together in a mortar. In addition to this paste, larksshould be supplied with poppy-seed, bruised hemp, crumb of bread, andplenty of greens, such as lettuce, endive, cabbage, with a little leanmeat or ant-eggs occasionally. " He says the cage should be furnishedwith a piece of fresh turf, often renewed, and great attention should bepaid to cleanliness. The care of the birds in the ark probably fell tothe women. As they had not read Bechstein, or any other author onbird-keeping, --and thousands of the birds must have been total strangersto them, --how did they know what diet to supply them with, and wherecould they get it, supposing they had time to supply them at all?

If the difficulty was great to keep the birds of a temperate climate, how much greater must it have been to keep tropical birds in a climatealtogether unsuited to them? The two birds of paradise bought by Wallacewere fed, he says, on rice, bananas, and cockroaches: of the last, heobtained several cans from a bake-house at Malta, and thus got hisparadise birds, by good fortune, to England. But how many cans ofcockroaches would be necessary for two hundred and fifty-two of suchbirds, --the number in the ark? and where were the bake-houses from whichthe supply might be obtained?

To keep this vast menagerie clean would have required a large corps ofefficient workers, especially when we remember that there was but onedoor in each story, as some suppose; or one door to the whole ark, asthe story seems to teach, and this door was closed; and but one window, and that apparently in the roof. The Augean stable, the cleansing ofwhich was one of the labors of Hercules, can but faintly indicate whatmust have been the condition of the ark in less than a month, supposingthe animals to subsist as long. 

_Whence came the water that covered the earth to the tops of the highestmountains?_ "All the high hills that were under the whole heaven werecovered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountainswere covered, " says the record. And to do this, it rained for forty daysand forty nights. A fall of an inch of water in a day is considered avery heavy rain in Great Britain. The heaviest single rain recorded fellon the Khasia Hills in India, and amounted to thirty inches intwenty-four hours. If this deluging rain could have continued for fortydays and nights, and had it fallen over the entire surface of the globe, the amount would only have been one hundred feet; which, instead ofcovering the mountains, would not have covered the hills. But, ofcourse, such a rain is only possible for a very limited time, and on asmall portion of the earth's surface. 

Sir John Leslie, in "The Encyclopedia Britannica, " says, "Supposing thevast canopy of air, by some sudden change of internal constitution, atonce to discharge its whole watery store, this precipitate would form asheet of scarcely five inches thick over the surface of the globe. " Butif the water that covered the earth above the tops of the highestmountains came by rain, it must have rained seven hundred feet a day forforty days! or there must have fallen each day, according to Sir JohnLeslie's estimate, more than fourteen hundred times as much water on theearth as the atmosphere contained!

But the writer says, "The fountains of the great deep were broken up. "To the Jews, who supposed, with David, that God had founded the earthupon the seas, and established it upon the floods, this meant something;but, in the light of geology, we see that it only demonstrates theignorance of the man who wrote and the people that believed the story. 

Adam Clarke, commenting on this passage, says, "It appears that animmense quantity of water occupied the centre of the antediluvian earth;and, as this burst forth by the order of God, the circumambient stratamust sink in order to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the elevatedwaters. " If true, it would not have assisted in drowning the world onespoonful. For if the strata sank anywhere to fill the hollow previouslyoccupied by the water, it would only make the mountains so much higherin comparison: hence it would require just that much extra water tocover them. In the light of geology, however, the notion is sufficientlyabsurd. A mile and a half deep, the earth's interior is hot enough toconvert water into steam; there is, therefore, no chance for water toexist in its centre, or anywhere near it. 

_It is as great a difficulty to discover where the water went when theflood was over. _ We are told that the fountains of the deep and thewindows of heaven were stopped, and the rain was restrained. But thiscould do nothing towards diminishing the water. All that it couldpossibly accomplish would be to prevent the rise of the water. But weare also told that "God made a wind to pass over the earth. " All thatthe wind could do, however, would be to convey to the atmosphere themoisture it took up in vapor; and this could not have lowered the watera yard. The highest mountain, Kunchinginga, is more than twenty-eightthousand feet high; the flood prevailed one hundred and fifty days, andabated two hundred and twenty-five; and if this abatement was done bythe wind, it must have blown an ocean of water from the entire surfaceof the earth, one hundred and twenty-five deep, every day for eightmonths! All the hurricanes that ever blew, blowing at once, would be thegentlest zephyr of a summer's eve, compared with such a wind as that;and by what possibility could such a craft as the ark survive the storm?

A question, proper to be asked is, _How were the animals supplied withlight?_ and how did the attendants see to wait upon them in the firstand second stories of the ark? There was but one window, and that onlytwenty-two inches in size, and it appears to have been in the thirdstory. It was a day when kerosene was unknown, and tallow dips wereuninvented. How did these animals live in the darkness? and, above all, how did Noah and his family supply their wants? It could have been noeasy or pleasant thing to wait upon hungry lions, tigers, crocodiles, and rattlesnakes in the dark, to say nothing of the danger. 

_How did they breathe?_ There was but one twenty-two inch window; theark was "pitched within and without with pitch;" "The Lord shut him in. "Talk of the Black Hole of Calcutta: it must have been pure as the breathof morning compared with the condition of the ark in one day. 

_Where did they obtain water for drink?_ Supposing all the additionalwater needed to drown the world was fresh, when mingled with the waterof the sea, as much as one-tenth of it would be salt water, and thiswould render it utterly unfit for drink. Provision must therefore havebeen made for water; and a space certainly half as large as the ark musthave been taken up for the water necessary for this immense multitude. 

_The fish, mollusks, crustaceans (such as our crabs and lobsters), andall corals, must have died if such a flood had taken place_, --thefresh-water fish from the salt water at once added to their properelement, and the salt-water fish and other marine forms from so large anaddition 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 thefucoidal vegetation, upon which myriads of animals subsist, must haveperished, and the animals with it, if the change in the constitution ofthe water had not killed them. Every time a man swallows an oyster, hehas evidence that the Noachian deluge did not take place. 

_The plants must have perished also. _ How many of our trees, to saynothing of the grasses and feeble plants, could endure a soaking ofnearly twelve months' duration? Some of the very hardiest seeds mightsurvive, but the number could not be large. The present condition ofvegetation upon the globe is another evidence, then, that this delugedid not take place. 

_When the ark landed on Mount Ararat, and the animals went forth, howdid they subsist?_ As they went down the mountains, the carnivorousanimals would have devoured a large portion of the herbivorous animalssaved in the ark. Beside the lions, tigers, leopards, ounces, and othercarnivorous mammals, amounting to eight hundred and ninety-two, therewere in the ark six hundred and sixty-six eagles, for there areforty-eight species; one hundred and forty-four buzzards, fourteenhundred and forty-two falcons, one hundred and forty hawks, two hundredand thirty-eight vultures, and eight hundred and ninety six owls. Whatchance would a few sheep, rabbits and squirrels, rats and mice, dovesand chickens, have, among this ravenous multitude? How could the antsescape, with ant-eaters, aard-varks and pangolins on the watch for themas 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 havebeen destroyed, after all the pains taken for their preservation. Noahshould have given the herbivora, at least a year's start, especiallysince the vegetation of the globe was so deficient. 

But we are told that the species of animals may have been much fewer inthe days of Noah; and, therefore, much less room would be necessary. Asingle pair of cats, say some, may have produced all the animals of thecat kind; a pair of dogs, all the animals that belong to the dog family. Such an explanation might have been given when zoölogy was little known, and geology had no existence; but there is no place for it now. Animalschange, it is true, and all species have probably been produced from afew originals; but the process by which this is accomplished is so slowin its operation, that we have no knowledge of the formation of a newspecies. 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 orolder than the deluge, so little changed from those of the present timein the same locality, that we cannot recognize any difference betweenthem. 

_"You seem to forget that all things are possible with God: he couldhave packed these animals into an ark of one-half the size, brought themaltogether 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 ofany such miracle. Noah was to take the animals to him, and to take untohim of all food that is eaten; and, as Hugh Miller remarks, "theexpedient of having recourse to supposititious miracle in order to getover a difficulty insurmountable on every natural principle, is not ofthe 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 moststupendous miracles, and entirely unnecessary ones. This, the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith saw, when he said, "We cannot represent to ourselves the ideaof all land animals being brought into one small spot, from the polarregions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia, and the thousands of islands, --theirpreservation and provision, and the final disposal of them, --withoutbringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that arerecorded in Scripture. The great decisive miracle of Christianity, --theresurrection of the Lord Jesus, --sinks down before it. "

It is a favorite method with the advocates of special revelations toshow their agreement with the operations of natural law, till adifficulty is met with that cannot be answered, when they flee at onceto miracle to save them. But, in this case, miracle itself cannot savethem. 

Geology furnishes us with evidence that no such deluge has taken place. According to Hugh Miller, "In various parts of the world, such asAuvergne in Central France, and along the flanks of Etna, there arecones of long-extinct or long-slumbering volcanoes, which, though of atleast triple the antiquity of the Noachian deluge, and though composedof the ordinary incoherent materials, exhibit no marks of denudation. According to the calculations of Sir Charles Lyell, no devastating floodcould have passed over the forest-zone of Etna during the last twelvethousand years. "

Archæology enters her protest equally against it. We have abundance ofEgyptian mummies, statues, inscriptions, paintings, and otherrepresentations of Egyptian life belonging to a much earlier period thanthe deluge. With only such modifications as time slowly introduced, wefind the people, their language, and their habits, continuing after thattime, as they had done for centuries before. Lepsius, writing from thepyramids of Memphis, in 1843, says, "We are still busy with structures, sculptures, and inscriptions, which are to be classed, by means of thenow more accurately determined groups of kings, in an epoch of highlyflourishing civilization, as far back as the fourth millennium beforeChrist. " That is one thousand six hundred and fifty-six years before thetime of the flood. Lyell says that "Chevalier Bunsen, in his elaborateand philosophical work on ancient Egypt, has satisfied not a few of thelearned, by an appeal to monumental inscriptions still extant, that thesuccessive dynasties of kings may be traced back without a break, toMenes, and that the date of his reign would correspond with the year3, 640 B. C. ;" that is nearly thirteen hundred years before the time ofthe deluge. Strange that the whole world should have been drowned andthe Egyptians never knew it!

From the "Types of Mankind, " we learn that the fact is "asserted byLepsius, and familiar to all Egyptologists, that negro and other racesalready existed in Northern Africa, on the Upper Nile, 2, 300 years B. C. "

But this is only forty-eight years after the deluge. What kind of afamily had Noah? Was amalgamation practised by any of Noah's sons? Ifall the human occupants of the ark were Caucasians, how did they producenegro races in forty-eight years? The facts again compel us to announcethe fabulous character of this Genesical story of the deluge. 

_"No intelligent person now believes that it was a total deluge:Buckland, Pye Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, and all Christian geologists, agree that it was a partial deluge, and the account can be soexplained. "_

How strange that God should dictate an account of the deluge that ledeverybody to a false conclusion with regard to it, till science taughtthem a better. But let us read what the account says, and see whether itcan be explained to signify a partial deluge. To save the Bible from itsinevitable fate, such men as Buckland, Smith, Miller, Hitchcock, andother Bible apologists, it is evident from their writings, were ready toresort to any scheme, however wild. 

I read (Gen. Vi. 7), "I will destroy both man and beast, and thecreeping thing. " How could a partial deluge accomplish this? (v. 13);"The end of all flesh is come before me. I will destroy them with theearth. " How could all flesh be destroyed with the earth by any otherthan a total deluge? (v. 17); "I do bring a flood of waters upon theearth, to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from underheaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. " Not only is manto be destroyed, but all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from underheaven, and every thing in the earth is to die. Can this be tortured tomean a partial deluge? (vii. 19); "And the waters prevailed exceedinglyupon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heavenwere covered; and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both offowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of creeping thing that creepethupon the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath oflife, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substancewas destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man andcattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and theywere destroyed from the earth, and Noah only remained alive, and theythat were with him in the ark. " Had the man who wrote this story been alawyer, and had he known how these would-be-Bible-believers, and at thesame time geologists, would seek to pervert his meaning, he could nothave more carefully worded his account. It is not possible for any manto express the idea of a total flood more definitely than this man hasdone. He does not merely say the hills were covered, but "_all_" thehills were covered; and lest you should think that he certainly did notmean the most elevated, he is careful to say "all the _high_" hills werecovered; and lest some one should say he only meant the hills in thatpart of the country, he says expressly "all the high hills that were_under the whole heaven were covered_. " He is even so cautious as tointroduce the phrase "_whole_ heaven, " lest some one in its absencemight still think that the deluge was a partial one. To make itsuniversality still more evident, he says, "All flesh died that movedupon the earth. " This would have been sufficiently definite for mostpersons, but not so for him; he particularizes so that none mayescape, --"both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of creepingthing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man. " To leave nopossibility of mistake, he adds, "all in whose nostrils was the breathof life, of all that was in the dry land, died. " Can any thing more beneeded? The writer seems to see that some theological professor may evenyet try to make this mean a partial deluge; and he therefore says, "Every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of theground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl ofthe heaven; they were destroyed from the earth. " Is it possible to addto the strength of this? He thinks it is; and he therefore says, "Noahonly remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. " Could anytruthful man write this and then mean that less than a hundredth part ofthe earth's surface was covered. If not a total flood, why save theanimals, above all the birds? All that Noah and his family need to havedone would have been to move out of the region till the storm was over. If a partial flood, how could the ark have rested on the mountains ofArarat? Ararat itself is seventeen thousand feet high, and it rises froma plateau that is seven thousand feet above the sea-level. A flood thatenabled the ark to float on to that mountain could not have been farfrom universal; and, when such a flood is accounted for on scientificprinciples, it will be just as easy to account for a total flood. 

_"The flood was only intended to destroy man, and therefore only coveredthose parts of the earth that were occupied by him. "_

The Bible states, however, that it was intended to destroy every thingwherein was the breath of life; and your account and the Bible accountdo not at all agree. But, if man was intended to be destroyed, the floodmust have been wide-spread. We know that Africa was occupied before thattime, and had been for thousands of years, by various races. We learn, from the recent discoveries in the Swiss Lakes, that man was inSwitzerland before that time; in France, as Boucher's and Rigollet'sdiscoveries prove; in Great Britain, as the caves in Devonshire show; inNorth America, as the fossil human skull beneath Table Mountaindemonstrates. Hence, for the flood to destroy man alone at so recent aperiod, it must have been as wide spread as the earth. 

Even according to the Bible account, the garden of Eden, where man wasfirst placed, was somewhere near the Euphrates; and in sixteen hundredyears the race must have rambled over a large part of the earth'ssurface. The highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas, are withintwo thousand miles of the Euphrates. That splendid country, India, wouldhave been occupied long before the time of the deluge; and, on theflanks of the Himalayas, man could have laughed at any flood thatnatural causes could possibly produce. 

_"How do you account, then, for these traditions of a deluge that wefind all over the globe?"_

Nothing more easy. In all times floods have occurred; some by heavy andlong-continued rains, others by the bursting of lake-barriers or theirruption of the sea; and wherever traditions of these have been metwith, men with the Bible story in their minds have at once attributedtheir origin to the Noachian deluge. 

_"But Jesus and the apostles indorse the account of the deluge. "_

Granted; but does that transform a fable into a fact? They believed thestory just as our modern theologians believe it; because they weretaught it when they were children, and had not learned better. Jesussays (Matt. Xxv. 37-39), "But as the days of Noe were, so shall also thecoming of the Son of man be. For, as in the days that were before theflood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until theflood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Sonof man be. " If the man had regarded the story as false, he never wouldhave referred to it in such a manner. And, in this manifestation ofcredulity on the part of Jesus, we can see the very false estimateplaced upon him by so large a portion of the people of this country. Letthe truth be spoken, though Jesus and all other idols be overthrown. Sohe would say, if alive, or he was not as good and intelligent a man as Ithink he was. 

By this story the Bible stands or falls as a divine book. It falls, aswe see, and takes its place with all other human fallible productions. For knowledge, we go to Nature, our universal mother, who gives herBible to every soul, and preaches her everlasting gospel to all people. 

Transcriber's Note:

 Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Variant spellings have been retained. Hyphenation has been standardised.