1888. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 159 
producing like, till at last another animal made its appearance 
still in the same line of progress; the side hoofs remained, but 
of diminished size, while the teeth became more like those of 
the horse. 
This genus (Protohippus) ran its course, and then another 
{Pliohippus) came into existence with greater resemblance to 
the horse, for it had single hoofs, and teeth still more equine. 
Next and last came the horse, the living servant of man. 
It is not possible as yet to trace the pedigree of any other 
animal as satisfactorily as this; there is, however, sufficient evi- 
dence to induce the belief that there has been a similar process 
in all species. 
The question is how to explain these facts. Scarce any one 
doubts that the first life came direct from the Creator. It is 
in regard to the successive populations that biologists differ. 
The fact of there having been such is beyond dispute. It is 
as to the manner of the successive genera coming into existence 
that there is question. Only two suppositions are conceivable. 
Hither each species was made de novo by the Almighty, or it 
was born of some preceding creature of a different species. ‘The 
former is the older theory, and claims to be in exclusive harmony 
with sacred writ. It teaches that God made, e. g., the Mountain 
Horse, Orohippus, from earth, air, and water, and gave it life ; 
that later, from more of the same raw materials, he made the Meso- 
hippus; and yet later from more earth, air, and water, he made 
the Miohippus, and endowed it with life; that, after another 
long interval, once more from more earth, air, and water, God 
made the Protohippus, and so on down to the present horse. 
There was a succession of creations, but no genetic relation be- 
tween them. This theory was devised when nothing was known of 
the life history of our globe, and when the plants and animals 
of Genesis were thought to be the first and only ones that ever 
existed. 
The other theory also holds to the belief in a Creator. It, 
however, teaches that only the first kinds of plants and animals 
were made direct from inorganic material. It admits of special 
creation sufficiently to account for the first links in the chain 
of life, but claims that, from these, others of new and different 
kinds were produced at some subsequent time, and from 
them others, andso on down through many stages to the present. 
It holds that the law of like producing like was then as now the 
law, till time and environments were ready, perhaps after thou- 
sands of generations, and that then ‘‘some cause unknown to 
science,” an agnostic euphemism for a more or less direct act of 
the Creator, so changed the factors in what may be called the 
