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carried from the mountains of Germany to the Alps, then recently upheaved, and as far as the Vosges and the Jura.

As to the cultivated plants which, with those of the valleys and the Alpine species properly so called, form the three elements which constitute the modern Swiss flora, the following are Heer's words with respect to them :-"The ancestors of many of our modern cultivated vegetables were originally indigenous to our soil. The great revolutions which overwhelmed their country, and changed its configuration, drove them from it, and it was not until a later period that their descendants returned to it, themselves unchanged. They now seem to be foreigners amongst us, yet they are descended from the true natives, which thus show what great modification plants undergo.' (Ann. Sc. Nat. vol. iii. 1865, p. 183.)

We give some examples borrowed from the author of this remarkable work on antediluvian botany.

Our hazel is probably sprung from an allied species (Corylus Mac-Quarrii, Forb.) which flourished in the miocene period. The Fagus deucalionis (Unger), very common in Switzerland during the same epoch, but still unknown in Denmark and even in Normandy during the age of stone, is considered to be the primitive type of our modern beech. A plantain tree hardly to be distinguished from that of America; a species of cyprus, and the liquidambar also grew formerly in the Helvetian forests. A walnut closely resembling ours, which disappeared from Switzerland after the formation of the tertiary miocene strata, was preserved in Persia and on the mountains of Asia by means of an allied species. At a later period it was reintroduced, first into Greece, then at Rome, in the time of the kings, and reappeared in the Alpine valleys.

M. Gaston de Laporta, well known by his valuable works on vegetable palæontology, also reports numerous examples which prove the possibility of deriving from indigenous antediluvian types a large number of cultivated vegetables, which are commonly supposed to be of exotic and comparatively recent origin. I need only mention a few instances.

I shall not dispute the story that Noah planted the vine in Judea; but it is certain that this plant is far more ancient than Noah, since to find its original stock we must go back to the oldest tertiary strata.

Our bay laurel (Nerium Oleander, Linnæus) dates through its ancestors (Nerium Rohlii) from the epoch of the formation of the upper chalk beds, and before attaining its present form it passed successively through those of the N. Parisiense (eocene beds of the Seine basin), of the N. Sarthacense (mean eocene sandstone of the Sarthe), of the N. repertum (upper eocene, gypsum of Aix), of the N. Gaudryanum (lower miocene), of the N. Oleander pliocenicum of Provence (lower pliocene); all of which forms differ but little from each other, and of which the last, N. Oleander pliocenicum) so closely resembles our modern bay laurel as to be specifically confounded with it.

Similar modifications have taken place in the palæocene stock (Laurus Omalii) of the noble or poet's laurel (Laurus nobilis), of which the successive stages, beginning with the most recent types, are as follows: the L. Canariensis of the lower pliocene strata of the Meximieux, a species which still exists in the Canary Isles; the L. princeps of the upper miocene beds; the L. primigenia of the gypsum of the upper eocene beds near Aix; the L. Decaisneana (mean eocene); lastly, the L. Omalii, the earliest form (palæocene).

Our European ivy (Hedera helix) also dates back beyond the tertiary epoch to the H. primordialis of the chalk beds, which, before producing our common ivy, has passed through the forms of Hedera prisca of Sézanne H. Philiberti of the gypsum of Aix; H. Kargii of Enigen; H. acutelobata of Dernbach; H. Mac-Quarrii of Greenland; H. Strozzi of Tuscany.

;

We must not forget to say that many vegetable types which now occupy the warm or temperate regions of Europe are sprung from Arctic types which were distributed all over the continent during the whole of the miocene period. Several sequoia, the liquidambars, the beech, the

REMOTENESS OF ORIGIN.

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lime, willows, alders, birches, elms, maples, ashes, and walnuts, &c., may be cited as examples.

It does not enter into the plan of this book to endeavour to determine the origin of all the plants now under cultivation, and to trace all their varieties. I have said enough to prove that this origin must be sought in a more distant time, and in a nearer place than it was formerly supposed, indeed than many still imagine.

CHAPTER IV.

NAVIGATION AND COMMERCE.

I. NAVIGATION.

His breast must have been bound with a triple circle of bronze, as Horace says, who first ventured to trust himself to the mercy of the waves on a tree trunk hollowed with the axe and with fire, or in a frail craft made of birch, bark, reeds, or the skin of sea-cows.

The canoe, formed of a single trunk, was the first type of the great three-masted ship and of the ironclad. Sometimes pointed at both ends, sometimes with sharp bows and square stern,' the canoes were doubtless used by the Danes of the age of stone to seek their food in the open sea, to which practice the numerous molluscs and sea-fish whose remains still lie in heaps on the shores of the Baltic bear witness. The inhabitants of the earliest Swiss lake dwellings used them for the same purpose.

Moreover, it is impossible to doubt that the first attempts at navigation date from the archæolithic age, when we find, buried twenty or thirty yards below the beds of rivers in Scotland, England, France, and Italy, canoes still containing the stone axe with which they were hollowed, and lying beside bones of men and of the Elephas primigenius or mammoth, with whom they were contemporary.

Some of these canoes, belonging to the age of polished stone, are of considerable dimensions. Such were, for example, those found at Robenhausen, Glasgow, Saint

In spite of their great antiquity the canoes of the Swiss lake dwellings resemble in every respect those of the islanders of the Pacific.

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Valéry, in the Valley of the Somme, which were no less than ten to fifty feet long by two to four wide. They were all of oak, formed of a single trunk, and shaped outside and in with more or less skill. It is almost unnecessary to say that they were all propelled by oars and not by sails. The use of the latter was long unknown to European man as to the inhabitants of the New World, always excepting the ancient Peruvians.

Several canoes not less than twelve feet long by three wide have been dug up in the British Isles; they were furnished at both ends with a species of handle, which seems to indicate that they were carried like the bark canoes used by the inhabitants of the shores of the North American lakes.

The Phoenicians can, therefore, no longer be regarded as the earliest navigators in our seas, although they had touched the shores of Spain and settled in that country before the time of Homer. At a far more remote epoch men acquainted with at least the rudiments of navigation brought from Sardinia to Elba and the neighbouring Island of Pianosa, pieces of black obsidian rock, foreign to these islands, from which the inhabitants made knives as sharp as those of Mexico. The numerous flint implements found in the same islands were brought thither from the country since known as France.

It is easy to understand that with such craft long voyages undertaken for trading purposes were impossible. But it is perhaps a mistake to suppose that the sea formed an impassable barrier to these early navigators. Authenticated facts, quoted by trustworthy authors-Humboldt, Kane, and Wilson, for example-prove that this assertion is too sweeping. Thus the kayak of an Eskimo fisherman, who was found living on the shores of Scotland, is preserved in the museum at Aberdeen. Other Eskimos of Greenland and Labrador have been more than once carried by ocean currents from the New to the Old World. Lastly, Wilson cites the recent example of a Japanese junk which was shipwrecked in Oregon, and whose crew