136 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 
are considered to represent the ordinary color- 
ing of distant ancestors. Young thrushes are 
spotted, young ostriches and grebes are irreg- 
ularly striped, young lions are spotted, and in — 
restoring the early horse, or Hyracothere, Pro- © 
fessor Osborn had the animal represented as — 
faintly striped, for the reason that zebras, the : 
wild horses of to-day, are striped, and because — 
the ass, which is a primitive type of horse, is — 
striped over the shoulders, these being hints — 
that the earlier horse-like forms were also — 
striped. { 
Thus just as the skeleton of a Dinosaur may 
be a composite structure, made up of the 
bones of a dozen individuals, and these in turn ~ 
mosaics of many fragments, so may the sem- ~ 
blance of the living animal be based on a fact, 
pieced out with a probability and completed ~ 
by a bit of theory. | 
REFERENCES 
There is a large series of restorations of extinct ani- — 
mals, prepared by Mr. Charles R. Knight, under the 
direction of Professor Osborn, in the Hall of Palwon- — 
tology of the American Museum of Natural History, — 
