MODERN HORSES AND THEIR ANCESTORS 89 



each foot corresponding to the inner of the three toes of 

 the Hipparion. The real representative, in the horse, of 

 the chief pad of the foot of animals which do not (as the 

 horse does) walk on the very tip of the toe, is a little 

 knob called the "ergot." The diagram, Fig. 13, shows 

 how this ergot corresponds 

 to the chief pad of the 

 three-toed tapir's foot, and 

 so to that of the dog also. 

 The absence of living 

 horses, or of any kind of 

 ass or zebra, from the 

 American Continent, when 

 first colonised by Euro- 

 peans in the sixteenth 

 century, is a very singular 

 fact. For we find a great 

 number and variety of 

 fossil remains of extinct 

 horses in both North and 

 South America. It seems 

 possible that some epidemic 

 disease swept them from the 



TAPIR HORSE 



FIG. 13. Diagram of the under sur- 

 face of the foot in the dog, tapir, 

 and horse, to show that the horny 

 knob of the horse's foot, called the 

 " ergot," corresponds to the central 

 " pad " of the other two. 



whole Continent not very 

 many centuries before 

 Europeans arrived for 



there is evidence in South America of the co-existence 

 there of peculiar kinds of horse with the " Indian " natives. 

 It is even alleged that Cabot, in 1530, saw horses in 

 Argentina, which were the last survivors of the native 

 South American species. And it is also said that the 

 Araucanian Indians of Patagonia have a peculiar breed 

 of ponies, which may be derived in part from a native 

 South American stock. I have never been able to 

 procure a skull of this breed, or any detailed description 



