Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

ox THE DELUGE. GTl of elements. Do we not now find animals terrified by an earth- quake — birds shunning the scene of violence, — dogs running out of a town,* and rats forsaking a sinking ship ? What over- coming terror would possess the animated beings on an island, if it were found to be rapidly sinking while worse than tropical ' torrents, aggregated water-spouts, thunder and lightning, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions united to dismay, if not to paralyse, the stoutest human heart : yet such probably would be but a faint similitude of the real deluge. Those who have themselves witnessed the war of elements, in some regions of our globe, are perhaps more able to conceive an idea, however inadequate, of such a time, than persons who have scarcely travelled beyond Europe, or made more than ordinary sea voyages. Happily for man, hurricanes or typhoons occur but rai-ely : earthquakes, on a great scale ; their overwhelming waves ; and devastating eruptions of volcanoes, still less often. That the approach of a general calamity would have affected animals, what we now see leads us to infer, and that many would have fled to the ark, is only in accordance with the won- derful instinct they are gifted with for self-preservation. Proud man would, in all probability, have despised the huge construc- tion of Noah, and laughed to scorn the idea that the moun- tains could be covered, even when he saw the waters rising. Thither, in his moral blindness, he would have fled, with num- bers of animals that were excluded from the ark, or did not go to it ; for we do not see all animals, even of one kind, equally instinctive. As the creatures approached the ark, might it not have been easy to admit some, perhaps the young and the small, while the old and the large were excluded .^-f" As we do * Concepcion and Talcahuano, pp. 403, 5. t The small number of enormous animals that have existed since the Deluge, may be a consequence of this shutting out of all but a very few. We are not told how many creatures died in the ark ; some of those least useful to man may have gone : but, even if none died, the few that quitted the ark could hardly have long withstood the rapid increase of enemies, unless their increase had been proportionably quick. Whether Job had himself seen, or only heard of, the leviathan and the behemoth, does not appear; but that these monsters were the megalosaurus and the igiiana- doii