SOME EARLY MAMMALS 241 



horses, which roam in such vast herds on the Pampas, are not 

 the descendants of the fossil horse of South America, but have 

 sprung from those introduced by the Spaniards more than three 

 hundred years ago. 



A great deal of fresh material has been collected since the 

 present writer, in the year 1894, published, in his Creatures of 

 Other Days, some account of the evolution of the horse as told 

 by the late Professors Marsh and Cope, and others; and some 

 of the old conclusions have to be abandoned. Professor H. F. 

 Osborn, 1 of the American Museum of Natural History, has taken 

 up this line of research, and obtained important results. One 

 of the trustees of the above museum, the late Mr. W. C. Whitney, 

 generously provided funds for explorations. These expeditions 

 began in the year 1890, and up to the year 1904, the American 

 Museum Collection has been enriched by the more or less com- 

 plete remains of 771 fossil horses, of which 146 were secured by 

 Mr. J. W. Gidley, who took up this work under Professor 

 Osborn. Five complete skeletons are now to be seen mounted 

 in the above museum. All the other museums of the world 

 together have only three complete mounted skeletons, and from all 

 this wealth of material Professor Osborn has been able to find 

 out three or four collateral lines of descent, some of which are 

 mixed up with the pedigree published years ago by the late 

 Professor Marsh. 



According to Professor Osborn the line of evolution of the 

 horse is, very briefly, as follows : First we have the little 

 Eohippus (or " dawn horse ") only eleven inches (or two and 

 three-tenths hands) at the withers, with its wrist or knee near 

 the ground. The hand was still short, with four little hoofs, 



1 See his article in the Century Magazine for November, 1904, on the 

 evolution of the horse in America (illustrated). 



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