PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES. 293 



no scientific evidence, and it is not pretended that there is the slight- 

 est evidence of any other kind that such successive creation has ever 

 taken place. When I was investigating this subject only the collec- 

 tions in Europe were accessible to me, but the materials they yielded 

 led me to think that the horse must have descended from an Anchi- 

 theriu?7i-like ancestor, and I may say, as I happen to know by cor- 

 respondence with him, that very eminent anatomist, the late Prof, 

 Lartet, of Paris, had arrived independently at the same conclusion. 

 Indeed, the story is so plain that no one deserves any particular credit 

 for drawing so obvious a conclusion. And since then paleontological 

 inquiry has not only given us greater and greater knowledge of the 

 series of horse-like forms, but enabled us to fill up the gaps in the 

 series, aud to extend that series farther back in time. 



That knowledge has recently come to us, and assuredly from a 

 most unexpected quarter. You are all aware that when this country 

 was first discovered by Europeans there were no traces of the exist- 

 ence of the horse in any part of the American Continent. And, as is 

 well known, the accounts of the earlier discoveries dwell upon the 

 astonishment of the natives when they first became acquainted with 

 that astounding phenomenon a man seated upon a horse. Never- 

 theless, as soon as geology began to be pursued in this country, it was 

 found that remains of horses horses like our European horses like 

 the horses which exist at the present day are to be found in abun- 

 dance in the most superficial deposits in this country, just as they are 

 in Europe. For some reason or other no feasible suggestion on that 

 subject, so far as I know, has been made but for some reason or other 

 the horse must have died out on this continent at some period pre- 

 ceding how long we cannot say the discovery of America by the 

 Europeans. Of late years there have been discovered on this conti- 

 nent in your Western Territories that marvelous thickness of ter- 

 tiary deposits to which I referred the other evening, which gives us a 

 thickness and a consecutive order of older tertiary rocks admirably cal- 

 culated for the preservation of organic remains, such as we had hith- 

 erto no conception of in Europe. They have yielded fossils in a state 

 of preservation and in number perfectly unexampled. And with re- 

 spect to the horse, the researches of Leidy and others have shown 

 that numerous forms of that type are to be found among these remains. 

 But it is only recently that the very admirably contrived and most 

 thoroughly and patiently worked-out investigations of Prof. Marsh 

 have given us a just idea of the enormous wealth and scientific im- 

 portance of these deposits. I have had the advantage of glancing 

 over his collections at New Haven, and I can truly and emphatically 

 say that, so far as my knowledge extends, there is nothing in any way 

 comparable, for extent, or for the care with which the remains have 

 been got together, or for their scientific importance, to the series of 

 fossils which he has brought together. (Applause.) This enormous 



