Such facts have an important bearing upon the history of creation; and it would be very unphilosophical to adhere to any view respecting its plan, which would not embrace these facts, and grant them their full meaning. If we face the fundamental question which is at the bottom of this particular distribution of animals, and ask ourselves, where have all these fishes been created, there can be but one answer given which will not be in conflict and direct contradiction with the facts themselves, and the laws that regulate animal life. The fishes, and all other fresh-water animals of the region of the great lakes, must have been created where they live. They are circumscribed within boundaries over which they cannot pass, and to which there is no natural access from other quarters. There is no trace of their having extended further in their geographical distribution at any former period, nor of their having been limited within narrower boundaries.
It cannot be rational to suppose that they were created in some other part of the world, and were transferred to this continent, to die away in the region where they are supposed to have originated, and to multiply in the region where they are found. There is no reason why we should not take the present evidence in their distribution as the natural fact respecting their origin, and that they are, and were from the beginning, best suited for the country where they are now found.
Moreover, they bear to the species which inhabit similar regions, and live under similar circumstances in Europe and Asia, and the Pacific side of this continent, such relations, that they appear to the philosophical observer as belonging to a plan which has been carried out in its details with reference to the general arrangement. The species of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific side of this continent, correspond in their general combination to the species of the eastern and northern parts of the American continent, all over which the same general types are extended. They correspond to each other on the whole, but differ as to species.
And again, this temperate fauna has such reference to the fauna of the arctic, and to that of the warmer zones, that any transposition of isolated members of the whole plan would disturb the harmony which is evidently maintained throughout the natural distribution of organized beings all over the world. This internal evidence of an intentional arrangement, having direct reference to the present geographical distribution of the animals, dispersed over the whole surface of our globe, shews most conclusively, that they have been created where they are now found. Denying this position were equivalent to denying that the creation has been made according to a wise plan. It were denying to the Creator the intention of establishing well-regulated natural relations between the beings he has called into existence. It were denying him the wisdom which is exemplified in nature, to ascribe it to the creatures themselves,--to ascribe it even to those creatures in which we hardly see evidence of consciousness, or, worse than all, to ascribe this wonderful order to physical influence or mere chance.