THE HOBSE. 5 



gation, has acquired nobler proportions_, liigher faculties^ 

 more strengtli, more speedy and more amenability to 

 guidance. 



'' No one (writes Sir Richard Owen) can enter the ' saddling 

 ground ' at Epsom, before the start for the Derby, without 

 feeling that the glossy-coated, 2:)roudly-stepping creatures led 

 out before him are the most perfect and beautiful of quad- 

 rupeds. As such, I believe the Horse to have been predestined 

 and prepared for Man. It may be weakness, but, if so, it is 

 a glorious one, to discern, however dimly, across our finite 

 prison wall, evidence of the ' Divinity that shapes our ends,' 

 abuse the means as we may." 



Sir William Flower, the successor to Sir Richard Owen, 

 in describing the horse from a somewhat different stand- 

 point, speaks of the adaptation of its organisation to its life 

 on the open ]3lains, where it is found. He calls attention 

 to the length and mobility of the neck, the position of the 

 eye and ear, the great development of the organ of smell 

 (which gives the wild horses, asses, and zebras the means 

 of becoming aware of the approach of their enemies) , while 

 the length of their limbs, the angles which the different 

 segments form with each other, and the combination of 

 firmness, stability, and lightness resulting from the reduc- 

 tion of all the toes to a single one, upon which the whole 

 weight of the body and all the muscular power are concen- 

 trated, give them speed and endurance surpassing that of 

 almost any other animal. 



" If we were not so habituated (writes Sir William Flower) to 

 the sight of the horse as hardly ever to consider its structure, 

 we should greatly marvel at being told of a mammal so strangely 

 constructed that it had but a single toe on each extremity, on 

 the end of the nail of which it walked or galloped. Such a 

 conformation is without a parallel in the vertebrate series, and 



