the Straits of Dover or the Irish Channel, to graze anew over deposits in which the bones and horns of their remote ancestors had been entombed long ages before, the feat would have been surely far beyond the power of such feeble natives of the soil as the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the dormouse, and the field-vole. Dr. Pye Smith, in dealing with this subject, has emphatically said, that "all land animals having their geographical regions, to which their constitutional natures are congenial,--many of them being unable to live in any other situation,--we cannot represent to ourselves the idea of their being brought into one small spot from the polar regions, the torrid zone, and all the other climates of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America, Australia, and the thousands of islands,--their preservation and provision, and the final disposal of them,--without bringing up the idea of miracles more stupendous than any that are recorded in Scripture. The great decisive miracle of Christianity," he adds,--"the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,--sinks down before it." And let us remember that the preservation and redistribution of the land animals would demand but a portion of the amount of miracle absolutely necessary for the preservation, in the circumstances, of the entire fauna of the globe. The fresh water fishes, molluscs, crustacea, and zoophytes, could be kept alive in a universal deluge only by miraculous means. It has been urged that, though the living individuals were to perish, their spawn might be preserved by natural means. It must be remembered, however, that even of some fishes whose proper habitat is the sea, such as the salmon, it is essential for the maintenance of the species that the spawn should be deposited in fresh water, nay, in running fresh water; for in still water, however pure, the eggs in a few weeks addle and die. The eggs of the common trout also require to be deposited in running fresh water; while other fresh water fishes, such as the tench and carp, are reared most successfully in still, reedy ponds. The fresh water fishes spawn, too, at very different seasons, and the young remain for very different periods in the egg. The perch and grayling spawn in the end of April or the beginning of May; the tench and roach about the middle of June; the common trout and powan in October and November. And while some fishes, such as the salmon, remain from ninety to a hundred days in the egg, others, such as the trout, are extruded in five weeks. Without special miracle the spawn of all the fresh water fishes could not be in existence _as such_ at one and the same time; without special miracle it could not maintain its vitality in a universal deluge; and without special miracle, even did it maintain its vitality, it could not remain in the egg state throughout an entire twelvemonth, but would be developed into fishes of the several species to which it belonged at very different periods.