in conjunction with the
terrific outpour from the windows of heaven, must have made the water
brackish, too salt for fresh-water fish, and too fresh for salt-water
fish; and consequently the aquatic animals must all have perished,
unless, indeed, they were miraculously preserved--a contingency which
anyone is free to conjecture, out no one is at liberty to assert, seeing
that the inspired writer never even hints such a possibility. Now there
is no evidence whatever that Noah took and _fish_ with him into the ark;
under natural circumstances they must have perished outside; yet the
seas and rivers still teem with life. When did the new creation of fish
take place?

7. What became of all the vegetation? Every particle of it must
have rotted during such a long submergence. But even if mysteriously
preserved from natural decay, it must still have been compressed into a
mere pulp by the terrific weight of the super-incumbent water. Colenso
estimates that the pressure of a column of water 17,000 feet high would
be 474 tons upon each square foot of surface--a pressure which nothing
could have resisted. Yet, wonderful to relate, just prior to the resting
of the ark on Mount Ararat, the dove sent out therefrom returned with
an olive leaf in her mouth _just pluckt off_. A fitting climax to this
wonderful story.

Finally the story relates how the ark rested on the top of Mount Ararat,
whence its inmates descended to the plains below, which were then quite
dry. Mount Ararat towers aloft three thousand feet above the region of
eternal snow. How the poor animals, aye, even the polar bear, must have
shivered! And what a curious sight it must have been to witness their
descent from such a height Often have I speculated on the probable way
in which the elephant got down, and after much careful thought I have
concluded thus: either he had waxed so fat with being fed so long on
miraculous food that he rolled pleasantly down like a ball, with no
other injury than a few scratches; or he had become so very, very thin
with living simply on expectations, in default of more substantial
fare, that he gently floated down by virtue of levity, like a descending
feather.

And then what journeys some of the poor animals would have to make; the
kangaroo back to Australia, the sloth to South America, the polar bear
to the extreme north. How they lived on the road to their ultimate
destinations the Lord only knows. There was no food for them; the de