02 ORGANIC EVOLUTION" 



he regarded himself as justified in quoting it as 

 demonstrative evidence of organic evolution. 



But indeed this European evidence sinks into 

 something like insignificance when compared with 

 the evidence which has subsequently been afforded 

 us by the researches of Marsh and others in 

 America. When the New World was discovered, 

 the horse was totally unknown to its inhabitants. 

 There was to be found no sign of its existence. 

 But the American paleeontologists have discovered, 

 one after another, the remains of various horse-like 

 animals, now in more superficial strata, now lower 

 down. The lower the stratum the closer the ap- 

 proximation of the remains to the ordinary verte- 

 brate type. Thus, at the present day, you may 

 walk beside the walls of an American Museum, 

 and may be defied to indicate any break or gap 

 in the collection of fossil remains which continuously 

 connect the horse of to-day with a five-toed animal, 

 hardly bigger than a large pig, which once flourished 

 on the continent of America. Even since Huxley 

 welcomed these American discoveries as confirming 

 the opinion he had formed of the meaning to be 

 attached to the work already done by the European 

 workers, fresh remains have been unearthed, and 

 now the series is absolutely complete. The evidence 

 of the limbs and teeth is conclusive. Whatever 

 the factors of evolution — whatever the forces, per- 

 sonal or impersonal, that may or may not preside 

 over it — whatever its implications as regards man 

 and his most cherished dogmas — the history of the 

 horse conclusively proves that, in the case of one 

 extant species at any rate, evolution has occurred. 



