g worthy
the laughing at to thinke so. It was sufficient, yea, very much, for
men driven against their willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a
voyage, to escape with their owne lives, without busying themselves to
carrie Woolves and Foxes, and to nourish them at sea."

It was under the impression made by this new array of facts that in 1667
Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on The Origin of Animals
and the Migration of Peoples. This book shows, like that of Acosta,
the shock and strain to which the discovery of America subjected the
received theological scheme of things. It was issued with the special
approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it indicates the possibility
that a solution of the whole trouble may be found in the text, "Let the
earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." Milius goes on to
show that the ancient philosophers agree with Moses, and that "the earth
and the waters, and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial
sky, together with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be
inherent in the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial
animals, and birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those
who imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. But the
subject with which Milius especially grapples is the DISTRIBUTION of
animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species found in America
and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely unknown in the
other continents--and of course he is especially troubled by the fact
that these species existing in those exceedingly remote parts of the
earth do not exist in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses
that to explain the distribution of animals is the most difficult part
of the problem. If it be urged that birds could reach America by flying
and fishes by swimming, he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly
nor swim?" Yet even as to the birds he asks, "Is there not an infinite
variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily, and have such
a horror of the water, that they would not even dare trust themselves to
fly over a wide river?" As to fishes, he says, "They are very averse
to wandering from their native waters," and he shows that there are
now reported many species of American and East Indian fishes entirely
unknown on the other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be
explained by any theory of natural dispersion.

Of those who suggest that