THE HORSE : A. ZOOLOGICAL STUDY. 201 



Iiere we have an actual and paleontologically proved descent in the 

 course of geological time, i.e., since the upper Eocene. A remark- 

 able confirmation of this has been contributed from America, and is 

 well illustrated by Marsh's diagram, a copy of which I now exhibit, 

 together with Oscar Schmidt's table showing the connection between 

 the odd-hoofed animals. We may look at these diagrams and allow 

 our fancy to summon before our mind's eye the time when the ancestors 

 of our present horses roamed over the marshy plains of tho 

 continent of the old world, and were prevented by their side toes 

 from sinking in the mud, just as are the tapirs and rhinoceroses of 

 the present day. We may fancy that the rude pictures found carved 

 by our own remote ancestors (on the shin bones found in fossiliferous 

 caves) of horses and mammoths give us some insight of what these 

 horses of the past were like, and, with Goethe, we may critically 

 look on the vigorous representations of Grecian horses on the freize 

 of the Parthenon, and observe that they are not like the war horses 

 of the present day, they present anatomical indications of their 

 being but semi-tamed and wholly natural and unartificial in develop- 

 ment. Bat we must leave the domain of speculation and return 

 to that of careful deduction ! Marsh, Cope, and others have clearly 

 proved a series of hippoid, horse-like, creatures on the slopes of 

 the Rocky Mountains in the Upper Tertiaries; and yet when the 

 Spaniards landed in America the horse was an unknown creature, the 

 mounted warrior was, like the ancient Centaur, worshipped asagod! 

 The equine animals of America had from some cause, which is at pre- 

 sent a profound mystery, disappeared from the continent of America. 

 Events since the discovery of the New World have tended to make 

 this fact still more remarkable, for it has been found that both North, 

 and South America are particularly favourable to development and 

 increase in number of horses. The question which here arises for 

 solution in the future is; Whether the hippoid animals of Marsh. 

 were actually ancestors of horses, or rather had not mammalian de- 

 velopment been going on on parallel lines in the old world and tho 

 new, Marsh's hippoids in America "vicariating" for horses, as llamas 

 do for their close allies the camels, and as marsupials in the Austra- 

 lasian region long did for mammals of the higher orders in most 

 parts of the world? Materials are not yet available for solution of 

 this problem. In spite of these doubts, the value of the facts which 

 have been ascertained concerning the descent of the horse to zoolo- 

 gical science is proved by Oscar Schmidt's statement, that " no 



