Ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the
geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were made
in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view
went on increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful
questions: How could animals so sluggish have got away from the
neighbourhood of Mount Ararat so completely and have travelled so far?
The explorations in Australia and neighbouring islands made matters
still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of
animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth.
The problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how
to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and
be now only found in Australia: his saltatory powers are indeed
great, but how could he by any series of leaps have sprung across
the intervening mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote
continent? and, if the theory were adopted that at some period a
causeway extended across the vast chasm separating Australia from
the nearest mainland, why did not lions, tigers, camels, and
camelopards force or find their way across it?
The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth
century gone to pieces.
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