88 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



after which all would appear to have been conceived. 

 The horse, for example — what can at first sight seem 

 more unlike mankind? Yet when we compare man 

 and horse point by point and detail by detail, is not our 

 wonder excited rather by the points of resemblance 

 than of difference that are to be found between them ? 

 Take the skeleton of a man ; bend forward the bones in 

 the region of the pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and 

 those of the leg and arm, lengthen those of the feet and 

 hands, run the joints together, lengthen the jaws, and 

 shorten the frontal bone, finally, lengthen the spine, 

 and the skeleton will now be that of a man no longer, 

 but will have become that of a horse — for it is easy to 

 imagine that in lengthening the spine and the jaws we 

 shall at the same time have increased the number 

 of the vertebrae, ribs, and teeth. It is but in the 

 number of these bones, which may be considered acces- 

 sory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode of 

 attachment of others, that the skeleton of the horse 

 differs from that of the human body .... We find 

 ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds, in birds, in fishes, 

 and we may find traces of them as far down as the 

 turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by 

 means of furrows that are to be found beneath the 

 shell. Let it be remembered that the foot of the horse, 

 which seems so different from a man's hand, is, never- 

 theless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of 

 the same bones, and that we have at the end of each of 

 our fingers a nail corresponding to the hoof of a horse's 

 foot. Judge, then, whether this hidden resemblance is 

 not more marvellous than any outward differences 



