XITT. 



THE HORSE AND HIS PEDIGREE. 



One of the most interesting and novel results 

 of the impetus lately given to biological science 

 is the power which it has now fairly attained of 

 reconstructing for us to a certain degree tlie gene- 

 alogy and past history of many among the most 

 familiar cultivated plants and domestic animals. 

 In no case has such a reconstruction been more 

 fully or more satisfactorily effected than in the 

 instance of our old friends and constant allies, the 

 horse and the donkey. By a happy series of for- 

 tunate accidents, the fossil bones of all the inter- 

 mediate links in the long chain of equine animals 

 have been preserved for us among the upheaved 

 rocks of various countries, but more es[)ecially of 

 Western America. By comparison of their differ- 

 ent minor details with one another, we are now 

 enabled to picture to ourselves the successive 

 stages in the evolution of liorsehood, and to follow 

 the fortunes of that very interesting and useful 

 family, from the tiny ancestor, no bigger than a 

 fox, who roamed at his own sweet will over the 

 grassy plains of the early Tertiary period, down to 



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