Letter: Fundamental belief in Noah's Ark

Sir: Noah's Ark need not have contained every variety and sub- variety of today's species ("Creative Tension", 8 April). Both plants and animals can diversify within a short space of time. The 500 varieties of sweet pea have developed from a single type since 1700. The staggering variety of domestic pigeon comes from a common stock, the wild rock pigeon, Columbia livia, of European coastlines.

On this basis it was necessary for perhaps 35,000 individual vertebrate animals to be carried on board the ark (estimate given by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in The Genesis Flood, Baker Book House).

A gigantic barge of volume 43,470 cubic metres (Hebrew 300 x 50 x 30 cubits), the Ark had the capacity of 522 American two-deck railroad cars. Each car can carry 240 sheep, so two trains of 73 cars each - less than one-third of the Ark's capacity - could contain 35,000 sheep-sized animals.

Genesis 6:20 tells us that two of every kind of bird, animal and creature that moves along the ground would come to the Ark. Living things employ two awe-inspiring strategies to beat adverse weather conditions: migration and hibernation.

Perhaps the animals used both these methods to reach the Ark and survive the deluge.

DEBORAH WOOLHOUSE

Leicester