164 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [LECT. VI. 



Horse ; see him in contrast with that sprawling quad- 

 ruped, the Crocodile ! The gait of the Insectivora is 

 not all that can be wished, although their legs are 

 fairly set under them ; it is only when the whole weight 

 comes to be carried by limbs ending, below, in a cloven 

 or a solid hoof, that the last degree of quadrupedal perfec- 

 tion is obtained. 



Go again to the Tapir, and see his paces slower or 

 quicker if you will truly value the forms and qualities 

 of a Stag, an Antelope, or a Horse. That Rome should 

 have been made in a day would have been a mere game 

 of toys, and not a miracle, in comparison with the 

 sudden transformation of an Eocene Palaeotherian into 

 a modern race-horse. I may be asked, What has all 

 this to do with the Insectivora ? Very much : the 

 Insectivora have been preserved to us to show what 

 simple creatures the early Eutheria were, and how little 

 they are, now, an improvement upon the Marsupial 

 types. The Tapir, also, in both the old and new world, 

 is a living witness of what general forms our special 

 Mammals must have arisen from. 



An old Naturalist (Scheuchzer) more than a century 

 and a half ago found the bones of a large Salamander, 

 and took them for the remains of a Man who had seen 

 Noah's flood ; homo diluvii testis. That occurrence 

 belongs to the recent things of the earth ; the 

 Tapiroids and quasi-Insectivores belong to the truly 

 old things. Our Insectivores, and the Tapir, are the 



