Life of Lower Lake Region. 127 



lower leg, joined to as many separate hoofs; 

 while in the living horse, two of the hoof at- 

 tachments are only rudimentary, their func- 

 tion being lost. The result is that the living 

 horse has but one hoof while our Anchithe- 

 rium had three functional hoofs for each foot. 



The teeth of Anchitherium are wonder- 

 fully preserved, not only in outline, but so 

 completely silicified as to carry the luster of 

 agates. Many of these Anchitherium fossils 

 indicate a really beautiful little animal of 

 graceful outline about the size of an antelope, 

 bringing to that early period a truthful 

 prophecy of the highest type of our modern 

 horse. And so abundant were they on the 

 hills of Shoshone that fragments of skeletons 

 are found in nearly all its fossil beds. 



On Plate XXII (i) is a good figure of the 

 lower front teeth of this animal from the lower 

 beds of the John Day. It was of this hand- 

 some fossil that an experienced stableman 

 once exclaimed: "Full mouth, five years old 

 past. Horse? By George! It is." 



