68 THE HORSE. 



In the quarries of Pikermi, in Greece, an immense 

 number of remains of large animals, now entirely 

 extinct, have been discovered and made known to us 

 mainly by the admirable memoir published upon 

 them by the eminent French palaeontologist, Albert 

 Gaudry.* These animals include monkeys, civets, 

 hyenas, wild boars, rhinoceroses, antelopes of various 

 kinds, a great giraffe-like creature called HeJlado- 

 tlierhim, and hipparions in such multitudes as to 

 show that these animals must have wandered over 

 the plains of Europe in great herds, comparable to 

 those of the wild asses of Tartary and the zebras of 

 South Africa of recent times. The collection made 

 by Gaudry alone consisted of 1,900 bones, belonging 

 to at least twenty-four individuals. They have also 

 been found in similar numbers at Eppelsheim in 

 Germany, and at Mont Leberon and in Vaucluse in 

 the south of France. 



One of the principal characteristics of the skeleton 

 of the Pikermi hipparion is the presence of a con- 

 siderable depression or pit upon the side of the face 

 in front of the orbit or cavity for the eye. Although 

 such a pit is not found in any of the existing species 

 of horse, it was not infrequent in many extinct 

 forms, and varied in them in size and depth. It so 

 closely resembles a similar depression, found in the 



* Animaux fossiles et Geologie de VAttique, 1862. 



