68 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



into several altogether peculiar types. It is 

 generally believed that at the time South America 

 was explored by the Spanish conquistadores the 

 native wild horses had become exterminated, 

 although it has been suggested that certain horses 

 seen by John Cabot in Argentina in 1530 were 

 remnants of the indigenous stock, as it is diffi- 

 cult to see how introduced animals had reached 

 that part of the country at such an early date. 



As regards the birthplace of the family, it was 

 suggested by a famous American naturalist, Pro- 

 fessor E. D. Cope, that the horse tribe had two 

 independent centres of development from animals of 

 a more primitive type, one in the Old World, and a 

 second in North America. On the face of it, this 

 is, however, a very improbable theory, and a more 

 plausible suggestion has been subsequently made by 

 another American naturalist, Dr. W. D. Matthew,^ 

 who wrote as follows : " I assume that since the 

 oreodonts [extinct American hog-like animals] and 

 peccaries [the New World representatives of the 

 swine] never reached the Old World, and the 

 camels did not reach it till the Pliocene, their 

 centres of dispersal were well to the south of the 

 [ancient] Bering Sea connection with the Old 

 World. I assume that since the horses are repre- 

 sented by a double evolutionary series, one in 



^ "The Continuity of Development," Popular Science Monthly , 

 New York, 1910, p. 473. 



