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time speaks of law and some kind of regularity ;—tells us that there 
must be a special cause for it, and a way of explaining it. Scme- 
times both fore-feet are thus provided with an extra hoof, very 
rarely it occurs on the hind feet,—more rarely still on all four. 
The latter was the case however with the eight-toed Cuban horse 
an animal which reached maturity, and underwent the scrutiny of 
scientific men. The extra hoof, notice is on the mner side, and is 
always smaller than the normal one. In his recent book on 
‘< CREATURES OF OTHER Days,’’ Mr. Hutchinson mentions several 
other instances; he also tells us that ‘‘in the museum at Yale 
College, there is preserved, a specimen of a horse, which, besides 
having two extra toes on each foot, had concealed beneath the 
skin, the remains of another one corresponding to the human 
thumb.” 
Our double-hoofed horse reminds us of similar phenomena in 
other animals, and starts many questions besides those relating to 
itself. Why, among the many varieties of pigeons due to the 
ingenuity of man, do we find repeatedly and unexpectedly a slaty- 
blue bird with two dark bars across the wings and other markings 
which its parents did not possess? What is the origin of the 
‘spinal and shoulder stripes, found sometimes on the Horse, always 
on the Ass? How is it that the latter animal, and indeed the 
former as well, have occasionally (and particularly while young), 
transverse bars on the legs, leading us to conclude there is some 
relationship to the Zebra, or the Quagga ? if so, what relationship ? 
Do the stripes sometimes found on young lions point to any 
relationship with the tiger ? Questions like these, in reference to 
both animals and plants, are legion ; how can they be answered ? 
I hope in this paper to throw some little hght upon them. : 
The phenomena mentioned are one and all palpable references 
to a chapter or chapters in the ancestral history of the animals,— 
exceedingly suggestive, full of information. I may say at once, 
that apart from the theory of Development, or Evolution, there is 
no method of explaining them. There is no naturalist of any 
authority or note in these days who does not, more or less, accept 
this theory. You can take up no modern work on any branch of 
Biology, which does not take for granted that all creatures now 
living in the world are descended from others gone before through a 
long line of varying ancestors, whose forms grow less and less fami- 
liar to us as we travel farther back in time, until we lose ourselves 
_ among the undefined lights and shadows of the early world. The 
theory has been opposed for many years, but has continuously 
gained ground, as one illustrative proof after another has been 
brought to light by the anatomist and the paleontologist. In the 
ase of the Horse these proofs and illustrations are more complete 
and more nearly perfect than in the case of any other creature, 
