The Malay Archipelago [pp. 479-495]

The YIalay Archipzelago.
ture made was adapted-opossums and kangaroos in Australia,
elephants, tigers, and the domestic animals on the larger continents, and beautiful and strange birds on nearly every island
of the sea.
But the objection will readily occur, If this distribution of
animals agrees with the Mosaic account of creation, how about
the deluge? Were all the animals gathered into the ark, and
if so, whence the wide difference of species from those at present existing in Asia, and how did the animals cross barriers which
they are never known to cross now? Transmutation of species,
if we believed in it, would be a convenient theory to help us
out of this difficulty, or the subsidence and elevation of continents, or the survival of the fittest. We must concede that inr
the present state of our knowledge it is not easy to reconcile
the geographical distribution of animals with the theory of a
universal deluge. Theologians must look at all the difficulties
of the case, and in due time the solution will come. Hugh
Miller thought he had found a solution in a limited deluge,
brought about in part by the subsidence of the earth in that
locality where man existed, and which by its depression would
bring in the fountains of the great deep. Another solution
which Prichard advocates, is the recreation on those distant
lands and islands of forms of life that had previously existed.
But it might be asked, (I) why not recreate all the forms of
life, and not attempt to preserve some of them in the ark?
And (2), the account of creation seems to imply that when God
finished it, he rested not to take it up again. With man, the
last and highest type, the work was complete, and its com pletion was emphasized by the Sabbath or period of rest.
When man sinned, God did not destroy them all and recreate
a new human race, but preserved one family. And so with
the animals. There is no record of recreation. Is the only
conclusion, then, that the deluge was limited? To this we
must say. that from the side of natural history there are facts
on both sides which render the question, for the present at
least, not easy of solution. On the one hand there are all the
physical difficulties of collecting birds, insects and animals over
seas which they never cross, and supplying this vast concourse
with appropriate food. And on the other, we find this equally
remarkable fact, which Mr. Wallace emphasizes, "of the recent
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