tirely new animals, of which they had no idea. Similar circumstances
have recurred in our own time, when the coasts of New Holland and the
adjacent islands were first explored. The various species of kangaroo,
phascolomys, dasyurus, and perameles, the flying phalangers, the
ornithorynchi, and echidnae, have astonished naturalists by the
strangeness of their conformations, which presented proportions contrary
to all former rules, and were incapable of being arranged under any of
the systems then in use." New Zealand, though singularly devoid of
indigenous mammals and reptiles,--for the only native mammal seems to be
a peculiar species of rat, and the only native reptile a small, harmless
lizard,--has a scarce less remarkable fauna than either of these great
continents. It consists almost exclusively of birds, some of them so ill
provided with wings, that, like the _wika_ of the natives, they can only
run along the ground. And it is a most significant fact, that both in
the two great continents and the New Zealand islands there existed, in
the later geologic ages, extinct faunas that bore the peculiar generic
characters by which their recent ones are still distinguished. The
sloths and armadilloes of South America had their gigantic predecessors
in the enormous megatherium and mylodon, and the strongly armed
glyptodon; the kangaroos and wombats of Australia had their extinct
predecessors in a kangaroo nearly twice the size of the largest living
species, and in so huge a wombat, that its bones have been mistaken for
those of the hippopotamus; and the ornithic inhabitants of New Zealand
had their predecessors in the monstrous birds, such as the dinornis, the
aptornis, and the palapteryx,--wingless creatures like the ostrich,
that stood from six to twelve feet in height. In these several regions
two _generations_ of species of the genera peculiar to them have
existed,--the recent generation by whose descendants they are still
inhabited, and the extinct gigantic generation, whose remains we find
locked up in their soils and caves. But how are such facts reconcileable
with the hypothesis of a universal deluge?

[Illustration: Fig. 112.

MYLODON ROBUSTUS.]

[Illustration: Fig. 113.

GLYPTODON CLAVIPES.]

The deluge was an event of the existing creation. Had it been universal,
it would either have broken up all the diverse centres, and substituted
one great general centre instead,--that in which the ark rested; or
else, at