i.] DARWINISM VERIFIED. 29 



Huxley's admirable lectures in New York, a brief 

 mention here will suffice to show their import. 



One of the most striking peculiarities of the equine 

 genus including the horse, ass, zebra, and quagga 

 is the modification of the limbs, so that what appears 

 to be the horse's fore-knee is really his wrist, and 

 what in the hind-limb looks like a reversed knee is 

 really his heel, while the lower halves of the legs are 

 really feet terminating in the middle toe armed with 

 its nail, which we call the hoof. The two adjacent 

 toes are represented only by splint-bones on either 

 side of the middle metacarpal or metatarsal, and the 

 radius and ulna in the fore-limb, as well as the tibia 

 and fibula in the hind-limb, are almost completely 

 fused together. Now according to the Darwinian 

 theory such a highly specialised animal as the horse 

 must be descended from a less specialised mammal 

 in which the limbs were like ordinary mammalian 

 limbs, ending in ordinary feet with five separate toes 

 each. The embryology of the horse points to this 

 conclusion, and here, as usual, but with unwonted 

 emphasis, palaeontology confirms the inference. Al- 

 ready in Europe had been found the three-toed hip- 

 parion, in which the two side toes were like dew-claws, 

 and the older anchitherium, in which all three toes 

 were complete. But the discoveries of Professor 



