172 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



Mesohippus, it is easy to see that if for any 

 reason these should develop into toes, they 

 would make the foot of a modern horse appear 

 like that of his distant ancestor. While such 

 a thing rarely happens, yet now and then nat- 

 ure apparently does attempt to reproduce a 

 horse's foot after the ancient pattern, for occa- 

 sionally we meet with a horse having, instead 

 of the single toe with which the average horse 

 is satisfied, one or possibly two extra toes. 

 Sometimes the toe is extra in every sense of 

 the word, being a mere duplication of the cen- 

 tral toe ; but sometimes it is an actual devel- 

 opment of one of the splint bones. No less a 

 personage than Julius Csesar possessed one of 

 these polydactyl horses, and the reporters of 

 the Daily Roman and the Tiberian Gazette 

 doubtless wrote it up in good journalistic 

 Latin, for we find the horse described as hav- 

 ing feet that were almost human, and as being 

 looked upon with great awe. While this is 

 the most celebrated of extra- toed horses, other 

 and more plebeian individuals have been much 

 more widely known through having been ex- 

 hibited throughout the country under such 



