HEREDITY. 129 



ent equine animal, can not be clearly determined, but the 

 presumption is that no saltus is needed to span gaps. 

 An interesting circumstance confirming the evolution 

 theory is, that a three-toed foal occasionally appears 

 in the breeding of horses. In other words, " rever- 

 sion " sustains the hypothesis of equine evolution ; 

 and all horses have dwarfed splint bones in their legs,, 

 which plainly indicate a three-toed ancestry. 



There was once a larger elk in Ireland and Den- 

 mark than now exists in any country, yet so nearly 

 resembled a modern animal of the class, that we can 

 not help being impressed with the idea that there 

 existed some kind of relationship between them, 

 though no direct connection could have been main- 

 tained; there must have intervened some kind of a 

 chasm. The saber-toothed tiger, whose bones were 

 found in Kent's Hole and other caverns in England, 

 must have been a larger feline than now exists. 



The bones of the cave-bear indicate the existence 

 of an ursine monster considerably larger than the 

 grizzly of the Rocky Mountains, or the great bear of 

 Russia. But whether these enormous creatures were 

 primitive or ancestral, we have no means of knowing, 

 except that they lived at a period earlier than any 

 species of an order now in existence. 



But I propose to introduce other kinds of matter 

 to elucidate heredity. Writers upon mental qualities 

 would have us to believe that the average criminal is 

 not responsible for his acts ; that he has inherited a 

 predisposition to indulge in criminality; and that 

 while indulging his propensities, he is merely obeying 

 impulses over which he has no control ! While there 

 is something worthy of consideration in the argument, 

 the danger is in going quite too far in the defense of 



