The Horse, as Comrade and Friend 



are not as straightforward as that of this little 

 man. Wrong presentations sometimes occur. 

 Sometimes the foal struggles within the mem- 

 brane, his head is projected and withdrawn, 

 and, if he had cut the membrane with his 

 hoofs and had drawn but one breath, he would 

 be suffocated, and a dead foal would be dropped. 

 It is the kind of provision that might have 

 been suggested by an Engineer if Nature had 

 called him in to advise her how to stop the killing 

 of colts by this cause, but he would have been 

 puzzled how to attach springy self-lubricating 

 pads to the hoofs. To Nature, in her dull 

 old slow way, it presented just no difficulty 

 at all. Why should it ? In her patent 

 evolution machinery she had made hoofs from 

 hair by the simple process of making the hairs 

 adhere together, compressed into a solid and 

 hardened fibrous mass capable of withstanding 

 hard wear and tear ; so why should she not 

 turn another handle, and arrange a prolonga- 

 tion of these same hair fibres beyond the 

 hardened section ; but so that they should 

 become more and more gelatinous as they 

 extended and finally become just plain lubri- 

 cating material ? That evolution machine of 

 hers is a marvel ; and that's just what old 

 Dame Nature did, and then issued her survival 

 of the fittest edict that those foals, who grew 

 footpads, should have the better chance of 

 living to propagate their kind, and that those 



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