22 THE PRESENT CONDITION 



lowest the essential features of life are the same, as I 

 have described in each of these cases. 



So much, then, for these particular features of the 

 organic world, which you can understand and compre- 

 hend, so long as you confine yourself to one sort of 

 living being, and study that only. 



But, as you know, horses are not the only living 

 creatures in the world; and again, horses, like all 

 other animals, have certain limits— are confined to a 

 certain area on the surface of the earth on which we 

 live— and, as that is the simpler matter, I may take 

 that first. In its wild state, and before the discovery 

 of America, when the natural state of things was inter- 

 fered with by the Spaniards, the Horse was only to be 

 found in parts of the earth which are known to geo- 

 graphers as the Old World ; that is to say, you might 

 meet with horses in Europe, Asia, or Africa ; but there 

 were none in Australia, and there were none whatso- 

 ever in the whole continent of America, from Labrador 

 down to Cape Horn. This is an empirical fact, and 

 it is what is called, stated in the way I have given it 

 you, the " Geographical Distribution " of the Horse. 



Why horses should be found in Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, and not in America, is not obvious ; the expla- 

 nation that the conditions of life in America are un- 

 favorable to their existence, and that, therefore, they 

 had not been created there, evidently does not apply ; for 

 when the invading Spaniards, or our own yeomen farm- 

 ers, conveyed horses to these countries for their own 

 use, they were found to thrive well and multiply very 

 rapidly ; and many are even now running wild in those 

 countries, and in a perfectly natural condition. Now, 

 suppose we were to do for every animal what we have 



