172 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 
Mesohippus, it is easy to see that if for any 
reason these should develop into toes, the 
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 Cesar 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 
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