ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 43 



J' 

 case, besides the general inference that rudi- 

 ments point us to a remote ancestry, we have 

 direct palasontological evidence that there have 

 been a whole series of extinct horse-like animals, 

 that began low down in the geological strata 

 with five toes (on the fore-feet, one being rudi- 

 mentary), which afterwards became reduced to 



four and then to three ; after which the two 



v t> 

 lateral toes began to become rudimentary, as 



we now see them in oxen, and later on still 



more so. Lastly, as we come nearer to 



recent times, we find fossils of the existing 



horse, with the lateral toes shortened up to the 



condition of splint-bones. Thus we have some 



half-dozen different genera of horse, all standing 



in a linear series in time as in structure, between 



'the earliest representative with the typical number 



of five toes, and the existing very aberrant form 



with only one toe. 



It is sometimes said that a striking corrobora- 



