Recent discoveries in the fossil beds of the Bad Lands of Nebraska prove that the horse originated in America.  Professor Marsh, of Yale College, has identified the several preceding forms from which it was developed, rising, in the course of ages, from a creature not larger than a fox until, by successive steps, it developed into the true horse.  How did the wild horse pass from America to Europe and Asia if there was not continuous land communication between the two continents?  He seems to have existed in Europe in a wild state prior to his domestication by man.

The fossil remains of the camel are found in India, Africa, South America, and in Kansas.  The existing alpacas and llamas of South America are but varieties of the camel family.

The cave bear, whose remains are found associated with the hones of the mammoth and the bones and works of man in the caves of Europe, was identical with the grizzly bear of our Rocky Mountains.  The musk-ox, whose relics are found in the same deposits, now roams the wilds of Arctic America.  The glutton of Northern Europe, in the Stone Age, is identical with the wolverine of the United States.  According to Rutimeyer, the ancient bison (Bos priscus) of Europe was identical with the existing American buffalo.  “Every stage between the ancient cave bison and the European aurochs can be traced.”  The Norway elk, now nearly extinct, is identical with the American moose.  The Cervus Americanus found in Kentucky was as large as the Irish elk, which it greatly resembled.  The lagomys, or tailless hare, of the European eaves, is now found in the colder regions of North America.  The reindeer, which once occupied Europe as far down as France, was the same as the reindeer of America.  Remains of the cave lion of Europe (Felix speloae), a larger beast than the largest of the existing species, have been found at Natchez, Mississippi.  The European cave wolf was identical with the American wolf.

Cattle were domesticated among the people of Switzerland during the earliest part of the Stone Period (Darwin’s “Animals Under Domestication,” vol. i., p. 103), that is to say, before the Bronze Age and the Age of Iron.  Even at that remote period they had already, by long-continued selection, been developed out of wild forms akin to the American buffalo.  M. Gervais ("Hist.  Nat. des Mammifores,” vol. xi., p. 191) concludes that the wild race from which our domestic sheep was derived is now extinct.  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.