it is a most extraordinary animal; the mounted specimens do not convey a proper idea of the
head and beak; the latter being contracted and hardened.
While resting on the banks of the Coxs River and contemplating what he has seen
that day Darwin notices the pitfall of an Australian lion-ant beetle and observes that
it constructs the same pit to catch its prey as its European counterpart. Yet since its
pit is only half the size he assumes it to be a different species. He now speculates on
why two lion-ants seen on opposite sides of the world should be similar but different:
Earlier in the evening I had been lying on a sunny bank and was reflecting on the strange
character of the animals of this country as compared to the rest of the world. A Disbeliever in
everything beyond his own reason, might exclaim ‘Surely two distinct Creators must have been
at work; their object however has been the same and certainly in each case the end is complete’.
While thus thinking, I observed the conical pitfall of a Lion-Ant; a fly fell in it and
immediately disappeared; then came a large but unwary Ant ... His fate however was no
better than that of the poor fly’s. Without doubt this predacious Larva belongs to the same
genus, but a different species from the European one. Now what would the Disbeliever say
to this? Would any two workmen ever hit on so beautiful, so simple and yet so artificial a
contrivance? It cannot be thought so. The one hand has surely worked over the whole world.
A Geologist perhaps would suggest that the periods of Creation have been distinct and
remote the one from the other; that the Creator rested in his labour.In the first paragraph Darwin is thinking about how different are the animals of
Australia compared to the rest of the world and he puts the case using the person who
is ‘A Disbeliever in everything beyond his own reason’ for two distinct creators. Then
in the second paragraph he uses the example of the lion-ant to conclude that there has
been only one creator using the person he describes as a ‘Geologist’, who of course
could be himself, to conclude that there must have been one Creator but different
periods of creation, perhaps in different parts of the world and separated by periods of
geological activity.
Although Darwin did not see any emus while in Australia he knew they existed and
this raised a fascinating question. The existence of similar large flightless birds such
as the rhea in South America, the emu and cassowary in Australia and the ostrich in
Africa was an enigma. He had seen the rhea and the wide distribution of these large
flightless birds over all the widely separated southern continents must have been of
great interest him, as they could not fly across the oceans and there was no mechanism
to explain their distribution other than separate creations in different parts of the world.
Charles Darwin then accomplishes a feat of considerable endurance by riding from
Wallerawang to Bathurst in a single day, a forty-two-kilometre journey in the heat and
dust of an Australian summer, and he describes riding through clouds of dust blown
by a wind so hot that it felt as if it had passed over fire. In Bathurst he stayed in the
88 Where Australia Collides with Asia
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