ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 213 



The best of evidence exists to show that the modern horse 

 has developed from a diminutive five-toed ancestor not much 

 larger than a jack rabbit. Fig. 37 shows this animal restored, 

 and compared in size with the head of the common horse. The 

 story is too long to be recited here, but should be read in col- 

 lateral literature. Space permits us to note only the significant 

 fact that actual relics have been found in western North America, 

 and are still in existence, showing the entire evolution of the 

 horse from the little five-toed animal just mentioned, up through 

 the forms with three toes, to the present form with one, the so- 

 called " splint bones " at the side being all that is left of the 

 original digits II and IV, all traces of Nos. I and V having 

 long since disappeared. Along with this reduction in the number 

 of toes has gone a gradual increase in the size of the body and 

 a hardening of the teeth till the readaptation was complete from 

 a small and probably timid animal living on soft feed and low 

 ground to the swiftest of all animals, of good size, subsisting on 

 upland grasses and prairies and fitted for locomotion on hard land. 



More than to any one else we are indebted for this history to 

 Professor H. F. Osborn of the American Museum of Natural 

 History, New York, who is now completing his material for an 

 almost perfect history of the horse, from the diminutive ancestor 

 down, or rather up, to the modern domesticated form, with many 

 distinct types between, but merging into each other gradually 

 and distinguished by differences almost imperceptible. Differ- 

 ing though they do from the modern horse, these many forms 

 are clearly horselike, and, moreover, they are connected by un- 

 mistakable links that bind them all together as one of the 

 greatest evolutionary achievements of the earth. 



As has been intimated, this history has been largely traced 

 through fossil remains found in western America, especially in 

 Wyoming. Europe affords evidences of the same evolutionary 

 processes, and without a doubt the same course of development 

 could be traced in Asia, as will likely one day be done, if exten- 

 sive explorations are made in that country. 



