Tlie Horse in America ; Prof. MarsWs Discoveries. 



27 



Now there is not a trace of the horse among the 

 antiquities of the Indian tribes on this continent. 

 Not a legend, not a fragment to mark its coexistence 

 with man, in all the records that have been com- 

 piled, in all the mounds that have been opened 

 unless the two following incidents bo accepted as 

 evidence to the contrary : (1) Dr. P. W. Lund was 

 the first discoverer of fossil bones of the horse in 

 youth America. He found in 1841, in a cave in Brazil, 

 among other remains of animals, the greater part of 

 the skeleton of a young horse which he described 

 as Eqnus neogsus, and declared to be identi- 

 cal with a specimen found in a another cave asso- 

 ciated with huniau bones. But Owen says, after 

 critically reviewing this case, that it affords no evi- 

 dence of the contemporaneity of the human and 

 equine races in the Brazilian caves, (2) Prof. Marsh 

 has in his possession a bone picked up by an explorer 

 among the ruins of one of the deserted cities of Cen- 

 tral America ; it is the coronary bone of a horse ; L e., 

 the first bone above the hoof. There is no doubt of 

 the antiquity of the ruined city ; as to that of the 

 coronary bone the reader may form his own judg- 

 ment. 



AN ASSYRIAN HORSE. 



The omission of all attempts at depicting the 

 horse or any member of the horse family on the part 

 of the American aboriaiues, if it were known to 

 them, is very remarkable. The earlier sculptures of 

 the old world frequently introduce the horse; on 

 the remains of Nubian tombs and Egyptian temples 

 we find tliis animal carved. An Assyrian horse 

 among the bas reliefs of Ashurbanipal is not less 

 remarkable for the elaborate trappings of his 

 harness than for his own. noble bearing. He is 

 every inch a horse. Surely such an animal would 

 have left some traces in Indian tradition ; but we 

 read that "When the Cherokees first saw the horse 

 bestrode bv Do Soto they were as much amazed as 

 were the soldiers of Fabricius when they first beheld 

 the elephants of Pyrrhus. But they named it in- 

 stautl.y ' the animal with a single finger-nail. 

 Modern science has made no better generaliza- 

 tion than this uniungulus." This is the 

 distinctive feature of the race; equally true 

 of the horse (Equus caballm), of the tame ass (Asinus 

 vulgaris), of the wild ass (A. onager) still abundant in 



Mesopotamia, and almost as different from the- do- 

 ini'stic species as a greyhound from a poodle, of the 

 zebra (J. zebra) of South African mountains, the 

 quagga (J. qutigya) and the peetsi (A. TiurchcWi), both 

 also of South Africa, and of the kiaug (.1. hcmionns) 

 of Thibet. If you claim the transformation of 

 species, said Cuvier in the early days of the develop- 

 ment hypothesis, you must produce, for instance, 

 between the palootlierium and the horse, since the 

 former has three toes and the horse only one, an 

 animal similar to each in other respects, but hav- 

 ing the intermediate number of toes. It is pre- 

 cisely this gage, thrown down HO confidently by 

 Cuvier a half century ago, that the palaeontologist 

 of to-day is prepared to take up : but the present 

 evidence is far more extended in its scope than that 

 which the Father of Pakeoutology deemed unobtain- 

 able. 



There is a vast portion of the Territories of 

 Wyoming and Utah, which in the period that 

 geologists call the tertiary, contained enormous 

 lakes. The oldest of these lakes remained so 

 long in eocene times, that the mud and sand accu- 

 mulated in it by slow deposits to more than a. mile 

 in vertical thickness. In these deposits Prof. Marsh 

 has found the remains of the Orohippus. This ani- 

 mal's skeleton resembles that of the horse more than 

 it does that of any other creature of the present day ; 

 but it was scarcely larger than a fox. Its skull was 

 proportionally shorter than that of the horse, and 

 the orbit of the eye was not inclosed behind by a 

 bridge of bone. But the remarkable characteristic 

 of the Orohippus was that his fore feet had four toes 

 and his hind feet three toes, all of which reached the 

 ground. 



Above the eocene, in the order of geological de- 

 posit, many centuries doubtless having elapsed in 

 its formation, theniiocene appears. A district known 

 as the Bad Lands of Dakota, Nebraska, and Colo- 

 rado, and another west of the Blue Mountains in 

 Eastern Oregon, contain deposits of lakes that ex- 

 isted in the miocene period. In thelatter of these lo- 

 calities Prof. Marsh has obtained the remains of the 

 Miohippus. It resembles the Orohippus in several 

 particulars, but had this noteworthy peculiarity it 

 had only three toes in the fore feet as well as behind. 

 All these toes reached the ground, and were useful, 

 or, at all events, usable. There is no depression in 

 front of the orbit of the eve. 



SKULL OF THE ANCHITIIEKH'M. 



In these miocene lake deposits another animal ia 

 found, closely allied to Miohippus. but differing in 

 having a deep depresssion in the skull in front of 

 the orbit. Prof. Marsh has discovered some and 

 Prof. Leidy other species of this animal, which 13 



