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 crowded; but its living cargo is not yet completed. A dense cloud of insects, and a vast army destitute of wings, make their appearance, and clamor for admission. The number of articulates that must have been provided for is estimated at seven hundred and fifty thousand species,--from the butterflies of Brazil, fourteen inches from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, to the almost 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 know four thousand six hundred species, could never have survived a twelve months' soaking; and they must therefore be cared for. The nine thousand two hundred of these add no little to the discomfort of the trebly-crowded ark.