EXTINCT ANIMALS 



Here, then, we have arrived at a form which 

 undoubtedly was closely related to the ancestors 

 of all the elephants — if not itself actually that 

 ancestor — and in it we see the origin of the ele- 

 phant's peculiar structure. From this com- 

 paratively normal pig-like Meritherium, the 

 wonderful elephant, with his upright face, his 

 dependent trunk, and his huge spreading tusks, 

 has been gradually, step by step, produced. 

 And we have seen some, at least, of the inter- 

 mediate steps — the elongation of the jaws and 

 increase of the size of the incisors in Palaeo- 

 mastodon — carried still further in Tetrabelodon, 

 and then followed by a shrinkage of the lower 

 jaw and final evolution of the middle part of 

 the face and upper jaw as the drooping, wonder- 

 ful, prehensile trunk. 



So much for the " great sagacious elephant " 

 and his extinct relatives. Let us now turn for a 

 few minutes to the most beautiful and the most 

 helpful to man of all animals — the horse, nobler 

 as he is bigger and stronger and more beautifully 

 shaped, than man's other animal companion, the 

 dog. The horse is curiously different from the 

 central typical mammals in that he has only 

 one toe on each foot instead of five, and further. 



