THE ONE BIG DIGIT OF THE HORSE 255 



Antelope ; and Dogs with five toes in front and four behind can 

 gallop as fast as Horses. 



Then there are so many cases whole families sometimes 

 quoted by Darwin, Guinard, and others, of which I have given 

 details in another place, who had six digits in hands and feet. 



If there be such a thing as an archetypal hand and foot with 

 five digits, where did these numerous persons, and other animals, 

 get their sixth digit from ? 



The theory of Flower and Lydekker, and others, that the one 

 digit of the Horse is derived from the big middle digit of Hipparion, 

 and this from that of AnchitJierium, and this from the big digit of 

 Pachynolophus, and this again from the enlarged middle digit (the 

 iii.) of a PkcenacoduS) would seem to be plain sailing. But one 

 would like to ask again, Are the hand and foot of Phcenacodus 

 composed of five digits or of six, with the middle one a fusion 

 of two ? 



This question would seem so preposterous that it almost takes 

 one's breath away to pen it ! Yet teratological facts leave us no 

 alternative but to ask it. Facts are so stubborn that they give one 

 no peace till they are somehow explained. 



When we see that the Leopard of to-day still carries on its skin 

 the impressions of plate-armour with which its ancestors millions 

 of years ago may have had their bodies protected, the notion that 

 the Horse's foot is an amalgamation of two ancestral digits which 

 may have occurred millions of years ago does not after all seem 

 so startling. Just think of the immense family of orchids. Some 

 incredible time ago their ancestral pistil and stamen became fused 

 and transformed into the modern orc}\\d-cohimn. Yet through the 

 innumerable variations that this curious flower has undergone, from 

 the size of a large pin's head to that of a tea saucer, this character- 

 istic feature has persisted. And it is only now and again, by some 



