796 ANATOMY OF VERTEBRATES. 



mankind, and the coincidence of the origin of Ungulates having 

 equine modifications of the perissodactyle structure with the 

 period immediately preceding, or coincident with, the earliest 

 evidence of the Human Race. 



Of all the quadrupedal servants of Man none have proved of 

 more value to him, in peace or war, than the horse : none have 

 cooperated with the advanced races more influentially in Man's 

 destined mastery over the earth and its lower denizens. In all 

 the modifications of the old palseotherian type to this end, the 

 horse has acquired nobler proportions and higher faculties, more 

 strength, more speed, with amenability to bit. No one can enter 

 the ' saddling ground ' at Epsom, before the start for the ' Derby,' 

 without feeling that the glossy-coated, proudly-stepping creatures 

 led out before him are the most perfect and beautiful of qua- 

 drupeds. 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. 



Thus, at the acquisition of facts adequate to test the moot 

 question of links between past and present species, as at the close 

 of that other series of researches proving the e skeleton of all 

 Vertebrates, and even of Man, to be the harmonised sum of a 

 series of essentially similar segments,' l I have been led to recog- 

 nise species as exemplifying the continuous operation of natural 

 law, or secondary cause; and that, not only successively but 

 progressively ; ' from the first embodiment of the Vertebrate idea 

 under its old Ichthyic vestment until it became arrayed in the 

 glorious garb of the Human form.' 2 



The series of observations on the Ungulate group of Mammals 

 yields insight, as above explained, into the mode of operation of 

 the secondary law ; and gives evidence of the amount of geo- 

 logical time intervening between the introduction and disap- 

 pearance of generic or subgeneric modifications. According to 



1 cxli. p. 119. 



2 lb. p. 86. Even in his partial quotation from my work of 1849, the author of 

 ccxni" (4th Ed. 1866) might hare seen ground for apologising for his preposterous 

 assertion, in 1859: — that 'Professor Owen maintained, often vehemently, the im- 

 mutability of species ' (p. 310), and for the question, as preposterous and unworthy : 

 • Does he really believe that at innumerable periods in the earth's history elemental 

 atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues?' (lb. Ed. 1859, 

 p. 483. In the Ed. of 1860, p. Ill, the imputation is tacitly abandoned.) The signi- 

 ficance of the concluding paragraphs of cxli was plain enough to Baden Powell, 

 cccxxxm". p. 401 (1855), and drew down on me the hard epithets with which Theo- 

 logy usually assails the inbringer of unwelcome light, en', p. 61. 



