162 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



progenitor of the horse, and how can it be 

 shown that there is any bond of kinship be- 

 tween him and, for example, the great French 

 Percheron ? There is only one way in which 

 we can obtain this knowledge, and but one 

 method by which the relationship can be 

 shown, and that is by collecting the fossil re- 

 mains of animals long extinct and comparing 

 them with the bones of the recent horse, a 

 branch of science known as Palaeontology. It 

 has taken a very long time to gather the nec- 

 essary evidence, and it has taken a vast amount 

 of hard work in our western Territories, for 

 " the country that is as hot as Hades, watered 

 by stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably 

 the richest in fossils." Likewise it has called 

 for the expenditure of much time and more pa- 

 tience to put together some of this petrified 

 evidence, fragmentary in every sense of the 

 word, and get it into such shape that it could 

 be handled by the anatomist. Still, the work 

 has been done, and, link by link, the chain has 

 been constructed that unites the horse of to-day 

 with the horse of very many yesterdays. 



The very first links in this chain are the re- 



