bout all
these kinds of beasts, which are neither tamed by man, nor spring from
the earth like frogs, such as wolves and others of that sort,.... as
to how they could find their way to the islands after that flood which
destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark.... Some, indeed,
might be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very
near; but some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does
not seem possible that any creature could reach them by swimming. It
is not an incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been
captured by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended
to inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting;
and it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished
through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this
labour by God."

But this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St. Augustine
never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increase it were the
voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci, and
other navigators of the period of discovery. Still more serious did it
become as the great islands of the southern seas were explored. Every
navigator brought home tidings of new species of animals and of races of
men living in parts of the world where the theologians, relying on the
statement of St. Paul that the gospel had gone into all lands, had for
ages declared there could be none; until finally it overtaxed even
the theological imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to
the divine command, distributing the various animals over the earth,
dropping the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe,
the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America.

The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the
eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his Natural and Moral
History of the Indies, published in 1590, he proved himself honest and
lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views, he broke
away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him great trouble.
Having shown the futility of St. Augustine's other explanations, he
quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long a voyage men woulde
take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru, especially that kinde they call
'Acias,' which is the filthiest I have seene? Who woulde likewise say
that they have carried Tygers and Lyons? Truly it were a thin