d hyaena harbored in their thickets. Cuvier framed an argument for the
fixity of species on the fact that the birds and beasts embalmed in the
catacombs were identical in every respect with the animals of the same
kinds that live now. But what, it has been asked, was a brief period of
three thousand years, compared with the geologic ages? or how could any
such argument be founded on a basis so little extended? It is, however,
to no such narrow basis we can refer in the case of these woods. All
human history is comprised in the nearer corner of the immense period
which they measure out; and yet, from their first appearance in creation
till now they have not altered a single fibre. And such, on this point,
is the invariable testimony of Palaeontologic science,--testimony so
invariable, that no great Palaeontologist was ever yet an asserter of the
development hypothesis. With the existing trees of our indigenous woods
it is probable that in even these early times a considerable portion of
the herbs of our recent flora would have been associated, though their
remains, less fitted for preservation, have failed to leave distinct
trace behind them. We at least know generally, that with each succeeding
period there appeared a more extensively useful and various vegetation
than that which had gone before. I have already referred to the sombre,
unproductive character of the earliest terrestrial flora with which we
are acquainted. It was a flora unfitted, apparently, for the support of
either graminivorous bird or herbivorous quadruped. The singularly
profuse vegetation of the Coal Measures was, with all its wild
luxuriance, of a resembling cast. So far as appears, neither flock nor
herd could have lived on its greenest and richest plains; nor does even
the flora of the Oolite seem to have been in the least suited for the
purposes of the shepherd or herdsman. Not until we enter on the Tertiary
periods do we find floras amid which man might have profitably labored
as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of fields, or a keeper of flocks and
herds. Nay, there are whole orders and families of plants of the very
first importance to man which do not appear until late in even the
Tertiary ages. Some degree of doubt must always attach to merely
negative evidence; but Agassiz, a geologist whose statements must be
received with respect by every student of the science, finds reason to
conclude that the order of the Rosaceae,--an order more important