PRE-EXISTING ANCESTRY 11 



for the age, the PLIOHIPPUS. The pliohippus, also called the 

 HIPPARION, was as large as a donkey, and had one functional 

 toe on each foot, and two smaller ones, each terminating in a tiny 

 hoof outside the skin of the leg. These smaller toes were entirely 

 functionless, never touching the ground when walking, evidence of 

 relationship to ancient types with five toes, but no longer of use to 

 the animal, and consequently of reduced size, and yet not having 

 entirely disappeared through long generations of disuse as they have 

 since done in the modern horse. 



An examination of the leg bones of the horse will reveal upon 

 either side of the cannon or shank below the knee and hock, long 

 slender bones extending down the sides of the central bone for 

 several inches and terminating in enlargements shaped like a hoof. 

 These slender bones are called splints and in occasional monstrosi- 

 ties or sports they develop to such an extent as to terminate out- 

 side the skin of the fetlock joint in a tiny hoof, bearing evidence to 

 an inherited tendency to have more than one toe. 



The fifth toe, lost for untold generations, may still be traced in 

 the callosities or chestnuts on the inside of the leg. These callosi- 

 ties correspond to the human thumb and great toe. 



We see then that the horse has developed during thousands of 

 years, and countless generations, from a little five-toed animal to the 

 powerful courser of modern times. Upon the hard surface of the 

 desert over which he has ranged, the broad five-toed foot would 

 be of no advantage, so little by little, generation after generation, 

 his members have become changed and modified into a single toe, 

 terminating in a hard, tough hoof, the best possible organ for rapid 

 running upon the desert plain. 



The very remote antiquity of the horse group, as attested by the 

 four- and five-toed ancestors that have been discovered in the 

 oldest tertiary rocks, suggusts their subsequent importance among 

 the fauna of the earth. We are not left to mere conjecture upon this 

 point, for discoveries indicate that long before man began to assume 



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