Now let the flood come: all are lodged in the ark of safety, and are ready for a year's voyage. But we forget: the ark has not yet received one-half of its cargo. The command given unto Noah was, "Take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall 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 of Noah'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, the second month, and the twenty-seventh day of the month. They were therefore in the ark for one year and seventeen days. What a quantity of hay would be required, the material most easily obtained! An elephant eats four hundred pounds of hay in twenty-four hours. Since there are two species of elephants, the African and the Indian, there must have been four elephants in the ark; and, supposing them to live upon hay, they would require three hundred tons. There are at least seven species of the rhinoceros; and fourteen of these, at seventy-five tons each, would consume no less than one thousand and fifty tons. The two thousand four hundred and seventy-eight clean beasts,--oxen, elk, giraffes, camels, deer, antelope, sheep, goats, with the horses, zebras, asses, hippopotami, rodents, and marsupials--could not have required less than four thousand five hundred tons; making a total of five thousand eight hundred and fifty tons. A ton of hay occupies about eighteen cubic yards; and the quantity of hay required would fill a hundred and five thousand three hundred cubic yards of space, or more than the entire capacity of the ark. If these animals were fed on other substances than hay, the extra difficulty of obtaining and preserving those substances would counterbalance any advantage that might be gained by the economy of space. A vast quantity of grain would be necessary for thousands of birds, rodents, marsupials, and other animals; and large granaries would be required for its storage.