The remains of domestic sheep are found in the
debris of the Swiss lake-dwellings during the Stone Age. The domestic
horse, ass, lion, and goat also date back to a like great antiquity. We
have historical records 7000 years old, and during that time no similar
domestication of a wild animal has been made. This fact speaks volumes
as to the vast period, of time during which man must have lived in a
civilized state to effect the domestication of so many and such useful
animals.
And when we turn from the fauna to the flora, we find the same state of
things.
An examination of the fossil beds of Switzerland of the Miocene Age
reveals the remains of more than eight hundred different species of
flower-bearing plants, besides mosses, ferns, etc. The total number of
fossil plants catalogued from those beds, cryptogamous as well as
phaenogamous, is upward of three thousand. The majority of these species
have migrated to America. There were others that passed into Asia,
Africa, and even to Australia. The American types are, however, in the
largest proportion. The analogues of the flora of the Miocene Age of
Europe now grow in the forests of Virginia, North and South Carolina,
and Florida; they include such familiar examples as magnolias,
tulip-trees, evergreen oaks, maples, plane-trees, robinas, sequoias,
etc.
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