Fish would be required for the otters, minks, pelicans, of which there are eight species, and must therefore have been fifty-six individuals in the ark; one hundred and five gulls, for there are fifteen species; one hundred and twelve cormorants, forty-nine gannets, one hundred and forty terns, two hundred and eighty-seven kingfishers, beside storks, herons, spoonbills, penguins, albatrosses, and a host of others; mollusks for the oyster-catcher, turnstone, and other birds.
The fish could not be preserved after death in any way to answer for food, and must therefore have been alive: large tanks for the purpose of keeping them would take up considerable of the ark's space. The water in such tanks would soon become unfitted for the respiration of the fish, and there must have been some provision, by air-pumps or otherwise, for charging the water with the air essential to their existence.
Many animals live upon insects; and this must have been the most difficult part of the provision to procure. There are nineteen species of goatsuckers; and there must have been in the ark two hundred and sixty-six individuals. These birds feed upon flies, moths, beetles, and other insects. What an innumerable multitude must have been provided for the goatsuckers alone! But there are a hundred and thirty-seven species of fly-catchers; and Noah must have had a fly-catcher family of nineteen hundred and eighteen individuals to supply with appropriate food. There are thirty-seven species of bee-eaters; and there must have been five hundred and eighteen of these birds to supply with bees. A very large apiary would be required to supply their needs. But, beside these, insects for swallows, swifts, martins, shrikes, thrushes, orioles, sparrows, the beautiful trogans and jacamars, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, and a multitude of others, too numerous to mention, but not too numerous to eat. Ants, also, for the ant-eaters of America, the aard-vark of Africa, and the pangolin of Asia. The great ant-eater of South America is an animal sometimes measuring eight feet in length. It lives exclusively on ants, which it procures by tearing open their hills with its hooked claws, and then drawing its long tongue, which is covered with glutinous saliva, over the swarms which rush out to defend their dwelling. Many bushels of ants would be needed for the pair of ant-eaters before the ark landed on Ararat. How were all the insects caught, and kept for the use of all these animals for more than a year? A hundred men could not catch a sufficient number in six months. And, if caught, how could they be preserved, together with the original stock of insects necessary to supply the world after the deluge? Some insects eat only bark; others, resinous secretions, the pith, solid wood, leaves, sap in the veins, as the aphid, flowers, pollen, and honey. Wood, bark, resin, and honey might have been supplied; but how could green leaves, sap, flowers and pollen, be furnished to those insects absolutely requiring them for existence? Thirty species of insects feed on the nettle, but not one of them could live on dried nettles. Rösel calculates that two hundred species subsist on the oak; but the oak must be in a growing condition to supply them with food. In no other way, then, could the insects have been preserved alive than by large green-houses, the heat so applied as to suit the plants of both temperate and tropical climates, and the insects so distributed among them, that each could obtain its appropriate nourishment.
Fruit would be necessary for the four hundred and forty-two monkeys, for the plantain-eaters, the fruit-pigeons of the Spice Islands that feed on nutmegs, for the toucans and the flocks of parrots, parroquets, cockatoos, and other fruit-eating birds. As they did not know how to can fruit in those days, and dried fruit would be altogether unsuitable, there must have been a large green-house for raising all manner of fruit necessary for the frugivorous multitude.
How were the various animals obtained? The command given to Noah was, "Two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark."
Animals, as is now well known, belong to limited centres, outside of which they are never found in a natural state; and naturalists know that these centres were established ages before the time when the deluge is supposed to have occurred.
Thus, Hugh Miller, in his "Testimony of the Rocks," says, "We now know that every great continent has its own peculiar fauna; that the original centres of distribution must have been, not one, but many; further, that the areas or circles around these centres must have been occupied by their pristine animals in ages long anterior to that of the Noachian Deluge; nay, that in even the latter geologic ages they were preceded in them by animals of the same general type. There are fourteen such areas, or provinces, enumerated by the later naturalists;" and Cuvier, quoted by Miller, says, "The great continents contain species peculiar to each; insomuch, that whenever large countries, of this description, have been discovered, which their situation had kept isolated from the rest of the world, the class of quadrupeds which they contained has been found extremely different from any that had existed elsewhere. Thus, when the Spaniards first penetrated into South America, they did not find a single species of quadruped the same as any of Europe, Asia, or Africa."
The white bear is never found except in the arctic regions; the great grizzly bear is only found in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains. Nearly all the species of mammals found in Australia are confined to that country, as the wingless birds of New Zealand are confined to that, and the sloth, armadillo, and other animals, to South America.
A journey to the polar regions would be necessary to obtain the white bear, the musk-ox, of which seven would be required, since it is a clean beast; seven reindeer, likewise; the white fox, the polar hare, the lemming, and seven of each species of cormorant, gannet, penguin, petrel, and gull, some of which are as large as eagles, as well as mergansers, geese, and ducks, certain species of which are only found in the frigid zone. Noah or his agents must have discovered Greenland and North America thousands of years before Columbus was born: they must have preceded Behring, Parry, Ross, Kane, and Hayes in exploring the Arctic regions. They searched the ice-floes and numerous islands of the Arctic seas, snow-shoed, over the frozen tundras of Siberia, to be certain that no living thing escaped them; then, after catching and caging all the animals, conveyed them, with all manner of food necessary for their sustenance, together with ice to temper the heat of the climate to which they were for more than a year to be exposed, returned to the nearest port, and, after a toilsome journey from the sea-coast to Armenia, arrived at their destination. How many of these animals would survive the journey? and, of those that did, how many would survive the change of climate and habits?
Another party must have visited temperate America; traversed New England in its length and breadth, forded wide streams, made their way through unbroken wildernesses, traversed the Great Lakes, roamed over the Rocky Mountains, and secured the black bear, cinnamon bear, wapiti or Canadian stag, the moose, American deer, antelope, mountain sheep, buffalo, opossum, rattlesnake, copperhead, and an innumerable multitude of other animals—insects birds, reptiles, and mammals, that are only to be found in the temperate regions of America.