Al'GUST, 1904.] 



KXinVLKDGE cS: SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



171 



The Jumping Hare is widely distiibutccl o\cr the 

 open districts of Soutli .\l'ric:i. In his rccx'nlly-puh- 

 lished \vori<: on the Mammals of the Cape Colonv and 

 adjacent lands, Mr. W. L. Schiter tells us that it is 

 fi>und throughout the higher and drier districts of the 

 country, extending northwards to Angola on the west, 

 and the 'IVansvaal and Rhodesia on the east, but not 

 apparently occurring in Xyasalaiid or Mozambique. 

 '1 he Si>uth .African .Museum contains examples of this 

 animal from the Tort Elizabeth, Albany, (iraaf-Reinet, 

 and Middelburg Divisions of the Cape Colony, and Mr. 

 Sclater states that it is also found throughout the 

 Orange Ri\er Colony, the upper part of Xatal, (iriqua- 

 l.ind West, Beehuanaland, and (ierman .South-West 

 Africa. 



The Spring-haas is \ery rarely met with in capli\ity. 

 As already stated the specimen now figured is, 1 be- 

 lieve, the only one ever brought to England alive, 

 although I have once seen an example in one of the 

 Continental Zoologic.il Gardens. The Zoological 

 Society's specimen was presented to them in iSg8 by 

 Mr. William Champion, F.Z..S., of Durban, Xatal, and 

 received at the Gardens on March 31 of that year. It 

 has lived in good health and condition ever since, but is 

 rarely to be seen outside of its box in the day-time, un- 

 less the keeper be specially summoned to exhibit it. 

 . The Spring-haas has been arranged by some authors 

 among the Murine Rodents and by others ne.ir the 

 yerboas, to which it exhibits much superficial re- 

 .semblance. Rut there is no doubt that its strongly- 

 marked characters require it to be placed in a family 

 by itself, and Mr. Oldfield Thomas, who has recently 

 published a general revision of the Order Rodentia, has 

 put the I'edetidiE at the commencement of the Hystrico- 

 morphine series, which is probably its most natural 

 position. Mr. !■". (j. Parsons, the author c f an 

 elaborate essay on the anatomical structure of Pcdcia 

 in the Zoological Society's " Proceedings " for i8g8, 

 has come to nearly the same conclusion. 



I'rofessor Joh\ .Milne has made the suggestion that the 

 displacement of position of the eaj'th's poles, which is of 

 an irregular kind and which can be traced tO' no known 

 law, may be due to movements of the earth's crust, and 

 that, therefore, the magnitude of the change in position 

 of the poles might be expected to correspond in some 

 way to the number and frec|uency of gre;it earthquakes. 

 This theory has been reviewed by M. A. de Lapparent, 

 w ho was the French secretary at the recent International 

 Congress of Academies, in an article entitled " The 

 Wandering Poles," and he finds that the measurements 

 made by the Meteorological Institute at Rome, under 

 M. Cancani, corroborate the Milne conclusions in a re- 

 markable way. Since great earthquakes and earth 

 tremors result apparently from movements that take 

 place in the earth's crust — an ocean bed sinking or a 

 continental mass rising — it seems natural that this 

 factor should contribute effectively to the change and 

 distribution of terrestrial mass, and should, con- 

 sequently, affect the position of the earth's axis, con- 

 jointly with the annual exterior causes. If this con- 

 clusion he a correct one, then by observing astro- 

 nomically the irregularity in movement of the earth's 

 poles we should be supplied with a mean.s of auscul- 

 tating the variations in the crust of the earth. The 

 science might almost be called the new astrology, since 

 wc might perceive in the apparent motions of the stars 

 cataclysmic action, pfvssibly of direct influcn<-e on man's 

 destiny, on the earth. 



TKe Later History of 

 the Horse. 



In the January number of A'wcri'/iv/i;!' I gav<' a briel 

 sketch of the gradual evolution of the specialised, 

 siiigle-locd, modern horse — or, rather, of all the mem- 

 bers of the genus Kqnns — from earlii'r ihree-loed and 

 four-toed mammals ol a more gi'ueralised type of bodily 

 structure. In that article only a single short paragraph 

 was devoted to* the spetMal origin of the domesticaled 

 horse, lack of .space preventing this important, although 

 exceedingly dillicull, aspect of the subject from re- 

 rei\ing the attention it deserves. Im the present article 

 it is my intention to discuss somewhat more fully the 

 little that is known concerning the history of Eqiius 

 caballits, as the doimesticated horse and its immediate 

 wild relatives are tcrnied by naturalists. 



Diu'ing the late prehistoric, or .Xcolithie, perio<i, when 

 |)riir.e\al man. had replaced the rude chipiied Hint im- 

 plements and weapons of his I'aheolithic forefathers by 

 a more ad\ancccl type, in uhlili the siuface was ground 

 smooth and polished, as well as in the Pakeolilhic period 

 itself, horses are defmitely known to* have been exceed- 

 ingly common throughout Western and Central Eiu-ope 

 in a wild state. Thisis fully attested by the abundance 

 of their skulls, teeth, and bones ini the superficial de- 

 posits of this country, such as the turbary of the I.ea 

 N'alley near Walthainstow, and a, gravel-bed at Audloy 

 End, and in niunerous caves on the Continent, like that 

 of La Madelaine in France. Although, attempts have 

 been made toi distinguish twoi species ol true hor.se froni 

 the prehistoric deposits, it seems practically certain that 

 all the remains are inseparable from Eqiius caballtis, 

 as typified by the ordinary domesticated horse of lSlo;rtlv 

 Western luirope. Careful ex^rmination of' all available 

 fossil skulls — that is to say, of the specimens in the 

 British and other Londoiii museimis, as well as the 

 figures of those from Continental localities given in 

 scientific works — indicates, moreover, that the Neolithic 

 and Pakeolithic horse agrees with the ordinary modern 

 breeds of Western Europe in the complete absence of 

 any remnant of the depression, in front of the eye for 

 the reception of the face-gland or larmier, which forms 

 such a distinctive feature in the skulls of their early 

 Pliocene three-toed ancestors, the Hipiiarions, and of 

 which a distinct trace persists in their probable im- 

 mediate progenitor, the extinct Eqiins sleiioins of the 

 later Pliocene epoch of this country and the Continent. 



Their semi-fossilised skulls and skeletons represent, 

 however, by no' means the whole of what we know con- 

 cerning the prehistoric horses of Western Europe. 

 Primitive man, as represented in this particular instance 

 by the cave-dwellers of La .Madel.aine, was, fortunately 

 for us, something of an artist, albeit of an extremely 

 ■ pre-Raphaelite " type, and has left us crude, although 

 unmistakable, sketches of several of the contemporary 

 m.-immals he was accustomed to. hunt or tame, among 

 which are some of the hor.se. In the main, these rude 

 sketches of the prehistoric horse present a very strong 

 general similarity of type, and portray a clumsy-headed 

 and short-limbed brute, with a.n upright or " hog " 

 mane, and a rough tangled tail, which was probably 

 only sparsely haired near the root. A couple of sketches 

 of this type are reproduced in figure i. 



