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Our next business is to look at the general character of these fossil remains, and it is a subject which will be requisite to consider carefully; and the first point for us is to examine how much the extinct Flora and Fauna as a whole disregarding altogether the succession of their constituents, of which I shall speak afterwards differ from the Flora and Fauna of the present day; how far they differ in what we do know about them, leaving altogether out of consideration speculations based upon what we do not know.
This discovery showed that some of the strange representatives of the giant South American Pleistocene fauna had lasted down to within a comparatively few thousand years, down to the time when man, substantially as the Spaniards found him, flourished on the continent.
See Richardson, 'Fauna Bor. Americana, p. 241, in regard to the American variety or species: also Major W. Ross King, 'The Sportsman in Canada, 1866, p. 80. The horns of the reindeer are developed at a most unusually early age; but what the cause of this may be is not known. The effect has apparently been the transference of the horns to both sexes.
Darwin's theory, for the much wider divergence observed in the specific types of the two regions. The reader will remember that at the commencement of the Glacial period there was scarcely any appreciable difference between the molluscous fauna and that now living.
The YUKON territories of the Dominion, and above all the State of BRITISH COLUMBIA, constitute a very distinct region from the rest of British North America, not only in their tribes of Amerindians but in their fauna, flora, and climate. British Columbia is one of the most beautiful and richly endowed countries in the world.
Its fauna is now marked, for instance, by the presence of medium-sized deer and cats, fox-like wolves, and small camel-like creatures, as well as by the presence of small armadillos, sloths, and ant-eaters.
Our next business is to look at the general character of these fossil remains, and it is a subject which it will be requisite to consider carefully; and the first point for us is to examine how much the extinct 'Flora' and 'Fauna' as a 'whole' disregarding altogether the 'succession' of their constituents, of which I shall speak afterwards differ from the 'Flora' and 'Fauna' of the present day; how far they differ in what we 'do' know about them, leaving altogether out of consideration speculations based upon what we 'do not' know.
By great good fortune, an extensive mammalian fauna of the latter epoch has now become known, in four very distant portions of the Arctogaeal province which do not differ greatly in latitude.
You see, if we could keep giraffes or reindeer or some other species of browsing animal there we could explain the general absence of vegetation by a reference to the fauna of the garden: 'You can't have wapiti and Darwin tulips, you know, so we didn't put down any bulbs last year. As it is, we haven't got the wapiti, and the Darwin tulips haven't survived the fact that most of the cats of the neighbourhood hold a parliament in the centre of the tulip bed; that rather forlorn looking strip that we intended to be a border of alternating geranium and spiraea has been utilised by the cat-parliament as a division lobby.
These fragile beings, that appear to belong to an enchanted fauna, white as rock crystal with soft borders of rose color or violet, sting like nettles and defend themselves by their fiery touch.
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