Handbook of Nature-Study 



A herd of ponies in the Isle of Shetland guarded by a sheep-dog. 



THE HORSE 



Teacher's Story 



"There was once a little animal no bigger than a fox'. 

 And on five toes he scrambled over Tertiary rocks. 

 They called him Eohippus, and they called him very small. 

 And they thoiight him of no value when they thought of him at all. 



Said the little Eohippus, I am going to be a horse! 

 And on my middle finger nails to run my earthly course! 

 I am going to have a flowing tail! I am going to have a mane! 

 And I am going to stand fourteen hands high on the Psychozooic plain!" 



— Mrs. Stetson. 



It was some millions of years ago, that Eohippus lived out in the 

 Rocky Mountain Range; its fore feet had four toes and the splint of the 

 fifth; the hind feet had three toes and the splint of the fourth. Eohippus 

 was followed down the geologic ages by the Orohippus and the Mesohippus 

 and various other hippuses, which showed in each age a successive enlarge- 

 ment and specialization of the middle toe and the minimizing and final 

 loss of the others. This first little horse with many toes, lived when the 

 earth was a damp, warm place and when animals needed toes to spread 

 out to prevent them from miring in the mud. But as the ages went on, 

 the earth grew colder and drier, and a long leg ending in a single hoof, was 

 very serviceable in running swiftly over the dry plains ; and according to 

 the story read in the fossils of the rocks, our little American horses 

 migrated to South America; and also trotted dry-shod over to Asia in 

 the Mid-pleocine age, arriving there sufficiently early to become the com- 

 panion of prehistoric man. In the meantime, horses were first hunted by 



