38 
what we may call “‘ effective’ toes, can in no way be regarded as 
artificial, for along with the digital alterations, others have kept 
pace in teeth, skull, vertebral column, digestive organs, &e. 
At the present time the odd-toed group is far less numerous than 
the other, both in varieties and in individuals; but in the earlier 
* times it seems to have far outnumbered it. Throughout middle 
and later Tertiary times the odd-toed species have been continually 
decreasing, the Horse itself having died out in America; while the 
even-toed kinds have rapidly increased, and are at present the 
more numerous, though man in his love of so-called ‘ sport’’ has, 
during the last twenty-five or thirty years, been doing his best to 
reduce them. 
Let us now for the remainder of our paper confine our attention 
to the Horse. But it must be remembered that we are not 
concerned this evening with what may be styled the artificial 
varieties, such as the racehorse, American trotter, Suffolk or 
Clydesdale cart-horse, &c. All these owe their being as such to 
human care and ingenuity ; we are to take the true natural ‘‘wild’’ 
horse as our starting point. Where shall we find it ? the true wild 
horse? Numerous herds of horses running wild are known in Austra- 
lia, New Zealand, Falkland Isles, N. and 8. America, &c., but in each 
of these cases we have only the descendants of the domesticated horses 
which have escaped and resumed theferal state. The true Wild Horse, 
or Tarpan is now to be found only in the wildest Steppe district of 
Asia, and you will notice from the next slide one or two important 
characteristics distinguising it from our tame varieties. It is a 
much clumsier, big featured form, rough in general appearance, 
the mane short, and half-erect,—the last survivor of the ancient 
pre-historic horse, yet the form from which was derived the last 
winner of the Derby. The bare fact, that from such as these, man 
has been able to develop so many forms for his own uses, prepares 
us to accept the idea of the original pre-historic progenitor having 
in its turn been evolved from some form older still. The date of 
the domestication of the Horse is altogether unknown; we find 
representations of it on the monuments of Assyria and of Ancient 
Egypt, dating as far back as 1800 or 1900 B.C., introduced into 
the latter country by the Shepherd Kings, and we have notices of 
it almost as old as that in our Bible. But it had been subdued by 
man long before that date ; its bones are found mingled with tools 
and weapons of Early Man, who amused himself in his leisure 
. time by cutting sketches of it on bits of horn or bone, the large 
muzzle and the short stiff mane being well shown. 
Fossil, or rather sub-fossil Horses—true modern forms are 
found in the most recent of the Tertiary deposits (Pleistocene) in 
many parts of the world and are not unknown in our own neighbour- 
hood. But below the Pleistocene we cease to find the modern 
