35 



is evident they did not touch the ground, being in this respect like 

 the two small toes at the back of the pig's foot. The teeth, and 

 the other parts of the skeleton of this same Hipparion prove to us 

 that it was a Horse, a three-toed Horse. Notice it once more on 

 the slide. Similar remains are found in deposits of corresponding 

 age in N. America, and although the palfeontologists there know 

 it by a different name Protohippus, there is no doubt that the 

 European and American species were the same ; certainly some of 

 them were, for there were several varieties or species of this three- 

 toed Horse. 



Here then is the secret that lies hidden in the splint bones of 

 the modern horse, and the explanation of the extra hoof or hoofs 

 which occasionally develop themselves. They are the visible tokens 

 of the horse's descent from a three-toed form, the vestiges of organs 

 once fully developed ; the two side toes having become gradually 

 useless, shrank and at last disappeared, ceased altogether to perfect 

 themselves. And these vestiges will in their turn assuredly, in ages 

 to come (as geologists reckon time) pass out of existence. 



But some will still ask, " Why two useless toes on the foot of the 

 Hipparion ? They were not useless originally. The next slide 

 shows the leg-bones of an older form, found in beds representing 

 Miocene times, the Anchitherium. or Miohippus, and here you see 

 the two side hoofs were long enough to be used in walking, and 

 were altogether stouter and stronger. How and in what way they 

 ceased to be so used we do not know, but the cessation of their full 

 development would be certainly favourable to the animal, confer- 

 ring as it would, greater speed. 



When geologists had arrived thus far in their progress of dis- 

 covery they were able to understand that occasionally the Horse 

 reverts to some one or other of its ancestral forms, brings up one 

 of the old fashions again; that the phenomenon of " two-hoofed- 

 ness " is not to be regarded merely as a curiosity, not as a mon- 

 strosity ; but that on the contrary it contains a portion of the 

 missing history of the ancestry of the Horse. Such reversion is 

 known as atavism, which, I believe is Latin for "great-great-grand- 

 father-ism," but is a much more convenient word to use. 



Even before the genealogy of the Horse had been traced thus 

 far back, many high authorities had ventured in their speculations 

 to prophesy that a four-toed, and even a five-toed ancestor would 

 be found. This was one of the most successful instances known of 

 the combination of inductive and deductive reasoning. On the 

 next slide is shown the skeleton of an animal just as it was found 

 by Professor Cope in the Lower Eocene Beds of the Wahsatch 

 Mountains in Utah. It has not, it is true, a very equine look, — 

 seems you will say to have no equine elements about it ; yet it is 

 now believed to be the oldest known hoofed animal, the ancestral 



