THE HOESE OF THE PEESENT AND THE PAST 479 



they did not happen improbable in the highest degree. It is requisite, 

 therefore, to consider the evidence bearing on the evolution of the horse, 

 and it will render the subject all the more easy of comprehension if an 

 attempt be made to explain what the word evolution is intended to express. 



At the outset it may be remarked that the doctrine of evolution is not 

 exactly new. " The great theory of evolution", writes Mr. Hutchinson in 

 The Creatures of Other Days, " was first dimly suggested by Greek philo- 

 sophers, such as Anaximauder (b.c. 610), who may have derived the idea 

 from Egyptian, Babylonian, or Hindu sources; then revived in a more 

 scientific form by Lamarck last century. In recent years it has been 

 placed on a truly scientific basis by the illustrious Charles Darwin, and is 

 now generally accepted by naturalists. Indeed it is hard in these days to 

 escape being an evolutionist, so abundant is the evidence in favour of the 

 doctrine, especially that derived from a study of extinct animals." 



Huxley writes in reference to evolution as the acting force in the past 

 history of Nature, " that at any comparatively late period of past time, 

 an imaginary spectator would have met with a state of things very similar 

 to that which now obtains; but that the likeness of the past to the present 

 would gradually become less and less, in proportion to the remoteness of 

 his period of observation from the present day. Preceding the forms of 

 life which now exist, the observer would see animals and plants not iden- 

 tical with them but like them, their diflferences increasing with their 

 antiquity, and at the same time becoming simpler and simpler; until 

 finally the world of life would present nothing but that undifferentiated 

 l->rotoplasmic matter, which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the 

 common foundation of all vital activity!" To all of which the reader, 

 according to his views, may urge the series of objections which have from 

 the first been formulated and overruled. How is it possible, it may 

 be asked, that a mass of protoplasmic matter — a simple, jelly-like mass, 

 giving hardly any evidence of life — can, under the influence of varying 

 conditions of environment, become resolved into plants and animals, 

 advancing steadily from the lowest forms to the highest? Clearly, the 

 answer comes; the possibility cannot be disputed, the changes are going 

 on perpetually under our eyes. Take the seed of a jDlant, or, better 

 still, the ovum of an animal, and place it under favourable conditions, 

 and the process of evolution begins and goes on to its completion. 

 Structures are successively evolved without any interference from without, 

 until a miniature man, or a lower animal, or a plant is formed. It is 

 very interesting to observe that in the process of development, as Von 

 Baer found, every organism in its earliest stages has the greatest number 

 of characters in common with all other organisms in their earliest stages, 



