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 zoölogical authorities enumerate two thousand and sixty-seven species of mammals, or, as they are commonly called, beasts. Of cetacea, or whale-like mammals, sixty-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.