Excerpt from Darwinism and Deity: The Mound Builders

How long this duration was, can not, of course, be determined, but suggestions, which are something more than guesses, have been made. The absence of cat, mouse, or rat, and still more, the entire absence of the domestic fowl, which was introduced into Greece in the time of Pericles, and is first known in Italy by coins struck about'a hundred years before Christ, and the presence of the sweet cherry, which was introduced into Italy from the East by Lucullus, fix one limit. These settlements did not last after about the begin ning of the Christian era. On the other hand, the re mains of birds found are precisely such as are found in Switzerland now. The wild plants and trees of their day are identical, in the minutest particular, with the ¿ora of the same localities at the present day. The bones of only two animals are found that do not live in Switzerland now: the urus, or great ox, and the au rochs, or bison. Caesar saw both of these in Germany, where, indeed, they did not wholly perish till the mid dle ages, and although the urus is now extinct, the bison is still preserved in a forest in Lithuania, for the special hunting sports of the Czars. Hence, whatever date may be assigned to the origin of these settlements, it must be within the present geological epoch.

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