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 



