The Wanderings of Plants and Animals From Their First Home (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Wanderings of Plants and Animals From Their First Home The history of our Domestic Animals and Cultivated Plants is a subject of absorbing interest to the educated man, and (if he knew it) to the uneducated man too. It forms no small, part of the history of Man himself and his slow advance to civilization. We cannot afford to kick down the ladders we have climbed by. If our venerable friend the "lowing Steer" has now "doffed the weary yoke" for good and all, and even his quite recent successor Dobbin bids fair to be driven off the field by a mechanical substitute, "the divel's oan team, " yet, some three or four thousand years ago, with our first wooden plough just invented, and the steam-plough still a long way ahead, what could we have done without "the ox and the ass to ear the ground"? And we have not quite done with our old friends yet, not till we have learnt to relish milk and beef manufactured without the aid of milkmaid or butcher, not till the invalid, advised to "take horse-exercise, " consents to take it alongside Master Tom in the day-nursery. And not then. The Iron Horse was to have exterminated his prototype of flesh and blood, but Dobbin seems inclined to stay, nay, if we except the plough-horse and the stager, he is in greater request than ever. And who can state the sum of our obligations to the sheep, the pig, the camel, the dog, and even poor mousing Puss? Or why should Chanticleer and his family, with other bipeds of the poultry-yard, be forgotten? And much the same may be said of Cultivated Plants - the grains, the potherbs, garden-flowers, fruit-trees, timber, and even ornamental trees. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.