several kinds of cubit to choose from, all differing each from the others. The controversy is one in which there is exceeding little footing for any party. I am inclined, however, to adopt, with Raleigh and Hales, the natural cubit, for the following reason. The given dimensions of the ark form the oldest example of measurement of which we have any record; and all, or almost all, the older and simpler standards of measure bear reference to portions of the human frame. There is the span, the palm, the hand-breadth, the thumb-breadth (or inch), the hairbreadth, and the foot. The simple fisherman on our coasts still measures off his fathoms by stretching out both his arms to the full; the village sempstress still tells off her cloth-breadths by finger-lengths and nails; the untaught tiller of the soil still estimates the area of his little field by pacing along its sides. Man's first and most obvious expedient, when he sets himself to measure, is to employ his own person as his standard; and the first or common cubit was a measure of this natural description equal in length to the extended fore-arm and hand. All the other cubits were artificial compounds of after introduction; and so, in the absence of direct evidence on the point, I accept the most natural and oldest cubit as in all probability the one employed in the oldest recorded piece of cubit measurement. And the ark, if measured by the common or natural cubit, must have been a vessel four hundred and fifty feet in length, seventy-five feet in breadth, and forty-five feet in height. Dr. Kitto, however, though we find him remarking that in computations of Scripture measures the cubit may be regarded as half a yard (Sir Walter's estimate), adopts, in his own computation of the size of the ark, without assigning any reason why, the palm-cubit, or cubit of twenty-one inches and nearly nine lines (21.888 inches); and, waving all contro

versy on the question, let us, for the argument's sake, admit the larger measure. Let us, however much inclined to hold with Raleigh, Shuckford, and Hales, agree with Dr. Kitto that the ark was five hundred and forty-seven feet in length, by ninety-one feet in breadth. Such dimensions, multiplied by three, the number of stories in the vessel, would give an area equal to about one seventh that of the great Crystal Palace of 1851. Or, to take a more definite illustration from the same vast building, the area of the three floors of the ark, taken together, would fall short by about twenty-eight thousand square feet of that of the northern gallery of the Palace, which measured one thousand eight hundred and fortyeight feet in length, by ninety-six feet in breadth. And thus, yielding to our opponents their own large measurements, let us now see whether the non-universality of the deluge cannot be fairly predicated from the dimensions of the ark.

I may first remark, however, that measures so definite as those given by Moses (definite, of course, if we waive the doubt regarding the cubit employed) were effectual in setting the arithmeticians to work in all ages of the Church, in order to determine whether all the animals in the world, by sevens and by pairs, with food sufficient to serve them for a twelvemonth, could have been accommodated in the given space. It was a sort of stock problem, that required, it was thought, no very high attainments to solve. Eighty years have not yet passed since kind old Samuel Johnson, in writing to little Miss Thrale a nice little letter, recommending her to be a good girl, and to mind her arithmetic, advised her to try the ark problem. "If you can borrow 'Wilkins' Real Character," we find him saying to the young lady, "a folio which perhaps the booksellers can let you have, you will have a very curious calculation,

which you are qualified to consider, to show that Noah's ark was capable of holding all the known animals of the world, with provision for all the time in which the earth was under water." Unluckily, however, though the dimensions of the ark were known, the animals of the world were not; and so the question, in at least one of its terms, had to be very frequently restated. Let us take it as we find it presented (drawn, however, from a much older source), in Sir Walter Raleigh's magnificent "History of the World." “If in a ship of such greatness,” says this distinguished man, "we seek room for eighty-nine distinct species of beasts, or, lest any should be omitted, for a hundred several kinds, we shall easily find place both for them and for the birds, which in bigness are no way answerable to them, and for meat to sustain them all. For there are three sorts of beasts whose bodies are of a quantity well known; the beef, the sheep, and the wolf; to which the rest may be reduced by saying, according to Aristotle, that one elephant is equal to four beeves, one lion to two wolves, and so of the rest. Of beasts, some feed on vegetables, others on flesh. There are one-and-thirty kinds of the greater sort feeding on vegetables, of which number only three are clean, according to the law of Moses, whereof seven of a kind entered into the ark, namely, three couples for breed, and one odd one for sacrifice; the other eightand-twenty kinds were taken by two of each kind; so that in all there were in the ark one-and-twenty great beasts clean, and six-and-fifty unclean; estimable for largeness as ninety-one beeves; yet, for a supplement (lest, perhaps, any species be omitted), let them be valued as a hundred and twenty beeves. Of the lesser sort feeding on vegetables were in the ark six-and-twenty kinds, estimable, with good allowance for supply, as fourscore sheep. Of those which devour flesh were two-and-thirty kinds, answerable

to threescore and four wolves. All these two hundred and eighty beasts might be kept in one story or room of the ark, in their several cabins; their meat in a second; the birds and their provision in a third, with space to spare for Noah and his family, and all their necessaries." Such was the calculation of the great voyager Raleigh, - a man who had a more practical acquaintance with stowage than perhaps any of the other writers who have speculated on the capabilities of the ark; and his estimate seems sober and judicious. It will be seen, however, that from the vast increase in our knowledge of the mammals which has taken place since the age in which the "History of the World" was written, the calculation which embraced all the eightynine known animals of that time would embrace those of but a single centre of creation now; and that the estimate of Sir Walter tells, in consequence, on the side, not of a universal, but of a partial deluge.

As man extended his acquaintance with the mammals, he found their number greatly increasing on his hands. Buffon, like Raleigh, though a professed naturalist, and a writer of admirable genius, had no very distinct notions of species. He was inclined to question whether even the ass might not be merely a degraded horse; and confounded many of the mammals of the New World with their representative congeners in the Old. And yet, in summing up his history of the mammaliferous division, he could state, that though it included descriptions of "a hundred and thirty-four different species of creatures that suckled their young, many of which had not been observed or described before," it was necessarily incomplete, as there were still others to add to the list, for whose history there existed no materials. At the same time he remarked, however, that the "number of quadruped animals whose existence is certain and well established does not amount to more

than two hundred on the surface of the known world." Yet here was the extreme estimate made by Raleigh, with what he deemed large allowance for the unknown animals, fairly doubled; and under the hands of more discriminating naturalists, and in the inevitable course of discovery, the number has so enormously increased, that the "eighty-nine distinct species" known to the great voyager have been represented during the last thirty years by the one thousand mammals of Swainson's estimate, the one thousand one hundred and forty-nine mammals of Charles Bonaparte's estimate, the one thousand two hundred and thirty mammals of Winding's estimate, and the one thousand five hundred mammals of Oken's estimate. In the first edition of the admirable "Physical Atlas" of Johnston (published in 1848) there are one thousand six hundred and twenty-six different species of mammals enumerated; and in the second edition (published in 1856), one thousand six hundred and fifty-eight species. And to this very extraordinary advance on the eighty-nine mammals of Raleigh, and the two hundred mammals of Buffon, we must add the six thousand two hundred and sixty-six birds of Lesson, and the six hundred and fifty-seven reptiles of Charles Bonaparte; or at least, subtracting the sea snakes, and perhaps the turtles, as fitted to live outside the ark,- his six hundred and forty-two reptiles.*

* The following estimate of the air-breathing vertebrates (that of the "Physical Atlas," second edition, 1856) may be regarded as the latest. It will be seen that it does not include the cetacea or the seals: