35 
is evident they did not touch the ground, being in this respect like 
the two small toes at the back of the pig’s foot. The teeth, and | 
the other parts of the skeleton of this same Hipparion prove to us 
that it was a Horse, a three-toed Horse. Notice it once more on 
the slide. Similar remains are found in deposits of corresponding 
age in N. America, and although the paleontologists there know 
it by a different name Protohippus, there is no doubt that the 
European and American species were the same ; certainly some of 
them were, for there were several varieties or species of this three- 
toed Horse. 
Here then is the secret that lies hidden in the splint bones of 
the modern horse, and the explanation of the extra hoof or hoofs 
which occasionally develop themselves. They are the visible tokens 
of the horse’s descent from a three-toed form, the vestiges of organs 
once fully developed ; the two side toes having become gradually 
useless, shrank and at last disappeared, ceased altogether to perfect 
themselves. And these vestiges will in their turn assuredly, in ages 
to come (as geologists reckon time) pass out of existence. 
But some will still ask, ‘‘ Why two useless toes on the foot of the 
Hipparion? They were not useless oviginally. The next slide 
shows the leg-bones of an older form, found in beds representing 
Miocene times, the Anchitherium or Miohippus, and here you see 
the two side hoofs were long enough to be used in walking, and 
were altogether stouter and stronger. How and in what way they 
ceased to be so used we do not know, but the cessation of their full 
development would be certainly favourable to the animal, confer- 
ring as it would, greater speed. ; 
When geologists had arrived thus far in their progress of dis- 
covery they were able to understand that occasionally the Horse 
reverts to some one or other of its ancestral forms, brings up one 
of the old fashions again; that the phenomenon of ‘‘ two-hoofed- 
ness’’ is not to be regarded merely as a curiosity, not as a mon- 
strosity ; but that on the contrary it contains a portion of the 
missing history of the ancestry of the Horse. Such reversion is 
known as atavism; which, I believe is Latin for “ great-great-grand- 
father-ism,’’ but is a much more convenient word to use. 
Even before the genealogy of the Horse had been traced thus 
far back, many high authorities had ventured in their speculations 
to prophesy that a four-toed, and even a five-toed ancestor would 
befound. This was one of the most successful instances known of 
the combination of inductive and deductive reasoning. On the 
next slide is shown the skeleton of an animal just as it was found 
by Professor Cope in the Lower Hocene Beds of the Wahsatch 
Mountains in Utah. It has not, it is true, a very equine look,— 
seems you will say to have no equine elements about it; yet it is 
now believed to be the oldest known hoofed animal, the ancestral 
