The best evidence that in the plan of creation animals are intended to be located within circumscribed boundaries, is further derived from their regular migrations. Although the arctic birds wander during winter into temperate countries, and some reach even the warmer zones; although there are many which, from the colder temperate climates, extend quite into the tropics, there is nevertheless not one of these species which passes from the northern to the southern hemispheres; not one which does not return at regular epochs to the countries whence it came from. And the more minutely we trace this geographical distribution, the more we are impressed with the conviction that it must be primitive; that is to say, that animals must have originated where they live, and have remained almost precisely within the same limits ever since they were created, except in a few cases, where, under the influence of man, those limits have been extended over large areas. To express this view still more distinctly, I should say the question to be settled is, whether for instance the wild animals which live in America originated in this continent, or migrated into it from other parts of the world; whether the black bear was created in the forests of New England and the northern states, or whether it is derived from some European bear, which by some means found its way to this continent, and being under the influence of a new climate, produced a new race; whether the many peculiar birds of North America which live in forests composed of trees different from those which occur either in Europe or Asia, whether these birds, which themselves are not identical with those of any other country, were or were not created where they live; whether the snapping turtle, the alligator, the rattlesnake, and other reptiles which are found only in America, have become extinct in the Old World after migrating over the Atlantic, to be preserved in this continent; whether the fishes of the great Canadian lakes made their appearance first in those waters, or migrated thither from somewhere else? These are questions which such an inquiry into the geographical distribution of animals involves; it is the great question of the unity or plurality of creations; it is not less the question of the origin of animals from single pairs or in large numbers; and, strange to say, a thorough examination of the fishes of Lake Superior, compared with those of the adjacent waters, is likely to throw more light upon such questions, than all traditions, however ancient, however near in point of time to the epoch of creation itself.