DISTRIBUTION OF PLANTS AT CREATION.
By B. E. Crawford
THE beauties of the earth as it came forth from the hand of its Creator are beyond the power of human language to describe. All was harmonious and perfect. No mark of sin rested upon the fair young earth; no falling leaves or drooping plants told of the havoc that sin has wrought. Time would fail to tell of the glories of the new-born earth, but we may well spend a few moments in considering briefly one phase of the subject. As our minds turn toward the far North and the distant South, the regions covered with perpetual ice and snow, unblessed with vegetation, except a few species of mosses, lichen, and stunted arctic plants, there comes to us almost unbidden, the inquiry, Was it always thus, and will it ever continue so? Let us, at the beginning of our investigations, study carefully several Scriptures which throw valuable light on the subject under consideration. The inspired record, in Gen. 1:29, 30, says: "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat." Several important facts are here brought to view. These scriptures contain diet-prescriptions for man and all animate beings. Wherever man or beast or fowl or creeping things should dwell, there herbs and trees were to grow and bring forth a plentiful supply of healthful, nourishing food. Some may say it was God's design that man and animals should live only in the warmer parts of the earth. Turning again to the Holy Book, we read: "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The descendants of Adam and Eve were to replenish and subdue "the earth," not only a part, but the entire earth; and wherever any living creature should exist, there man's dominion should extend. As stated above, plants grew wherever animals lived, but we have a still more definite statement than this, to the effect that plants were found "upon the face of all the earth;" and from Gen. 2:6 we learn that "there went up a mist from the earth, and *watered the whole face of the ground." The Garden of Eden was especially favored with a great variety of useful and beautiful plants, for "out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden." It was God's design that the whole earth should, under the hand of man, become as beautiful as the Garden of Eden, and this would have been the case had man but fulfilled the Creator's glorious plan. In Gen. 1:31, we read: "And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." "All was perfect, worthy of its divine Author." The atmosphere was mild and uniform in temperature. No piercing winds blew from the frozen regions of the North, nor heated blasts from the parched deserts of the Equator. "No taint of sin, or shadow of death, marred the fair creation." At the time of the Fall the atmosphere was changed, and became subject to marked variations in temperature. The flowers drooped, the leaves fell, and there appeared the first signs of decay. Such are the scripture evidences concerning the distribution of plants at creation. Let us see what science says. Prof. W. C. Stevens, in speaking of the time known to geologists as the Cretaceous period, says: It is a fact of great interest that the plants of this period occur as fossils in northern latitudes all around the world; and we may be quite certain that there was a continuity of land masses in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle at that time. The sequoias, which are now restricted to California and Oregon, occur as fossils in the Cretaceous strata of Greenland, England, France, Germany, Italy, Siberia, Alaska, and Kansas. The northern hemisphere at that time was like a vast botanic garden in which were growing side by side plants which are now distributed in various climes. Cycads, palms, and tree ferns were near neighbors to oaks, beeches, and chestnuts, and with them were found the, at present, cosmopolitan compositae and leguminosae. The same author, in speaking of the original distribution of plants, says: Whether they first originated on the earth, or whether independently in more than one locality, is not known. It is known, however, that when they had advanced sufficiently in the course of their evolution to form tissues which could be preserved as fossils, they were fairly uniformly distributed throughout all latitudes, the earth down to Middle Tertiary time having a temperate climate, even within the Arctic Circle. After that time, snow and ice accumulated in and beyond the Arctic Circle, and extended far southward in the form of moving glaciers. Land plants had then to move northward by means of their seeds and spores, or become exterminated. When the ice again retreated toward the poles, only those exile plants which were able to adapt themselves to extremes of temperatures moved northward. The following paragraph concerning the climate during the time known to geologists as the Carboniferous Age, is quoted from Dana's "New Text-book of Geology": The wide distribution of the coal regions over the globe, from the tropics to remote Arctic lands, and the general similarity of the vegetable remains in the coal-beds of these distant zones, prove that there was a general uniformity of climate over the globe in the carboniferous age, or at least that the climate was nowhere colder than warm-temperate. Besides, corals and shells existed during the subcarboniferous period in Europe, the United States, and the Arctic Zone within twenty degrees of the north pole, and so profusely as to form thick limestones out of their accumulations; and some Arctic species are identical with those of Europe and America. The ocean's waters, even in the far north, were, therefore, warm compared with those of the modern temperate zone, and probably quite as warm as the coral-reef seas of the present age, which lie mostly between the parallels of twenty-eight degrees either side of the equator. Thus we find that both science and the Bible prove very conclusively that there was a time when the climate was mild and equable in all parts of the earth, and plants were uniformly distributed over its surface. Science, however, furnishes us no accurate data from which to determine the exact time during which this condition existed. This we learn from the Scripture record to be during the period which extended from the time when "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good," until the day that sin entered the world through man's disobedience, and the Lord mercifully provided Adam and his companion with garments of skins as a protection from the extremes of heat and cold. The present condition of things will continue to exist until that scripture is fulfilled which says, "Behold, I make all things new." Then will the earth be restored to its original beauty, and "they that have kept God's commandments shall breathe in immortal vigor beneath the tree of life."