2S6 STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



teratological specimen which happens to turn up, that the secret 

 of its origin is revealed.^ 



The question is whether there is any evidence to show that the 

 Horse and the Ox may be more closely related than the Horse is to 

 the Rhinoceros. I think there is. There is, however, no doubt that 

 all three, the Horse, the Ox, and the Rhinoceros, at some still 

 remoter period came from the same stock.^ 



It might be said that nothing is easier than to identify the 

 thumb or big toe, which have only two phalanges, while the other 

 digits have three. Even in the foot of the Seal {Macrorhimis Leo- 

 ninus)^ where both the thumb and little finger are about of equal 

 length, and both prolonged beyond the other three digits, the 



1 See Dr. Maxwell T. Master's Vegetable Teratology, pp. 380-384. 



^ In Creatures of Other Days, pi. 21, Mr. Hutchinson has clothed Phcenacodus with 

 longitudinal stripes somewhat like a /"ai'a, or like ihs common American Tapir ; aXiAHyra- 

 cotherium with stripes like a Zebra. For reasons given in another place, it is more 

 probable that these two ancient mammals were dappled, somewhat in the manner of a 

 Leopard. As delineated, they are too much like modern striped animals. But as they 

 were, as has already been suggested, nearer to their ancestral Glyptodontoid forms, the 

 markings in those early days could hardly have been so modified as those of the Zebra 

 and Tiger of these days. They seem to have been given a recent dress over an ancient 

 skeleton. 



Then on pi. 23 Mr. Hutchinson gives a Sabre-toothed Tiger attacking a Macratichenia. 

 This carnivore is shown as striped, like the existing Tiger. Now, the striping of the 

 Tiger, as I have endeavoured to prove, is a much modified rosetting. It does not at all 

 follow that, because the skeleton of the sabre-toothed carnivore is like that of a Tiger, 

 therefore its skin-marking was like the Tiger of our days. It is more likely that it was 

 rosetted like a Jaguar, not only because it was nearer the basis of its own evolutionary 

 branch, but also because it comes from the Pampas formations, from which region the 

 Jaguar also comes. Curiously enough, in the Saturday Review of 15th September 1894, 

 p. 306, in a review of Mr. Hutchinson's Creaitires of Other Days, I find this : — ' Here are 

 represented two ancient and ancestral mammals, the Phcenacodus and the Hyracotheriuvi : 

 the former is ornamented with longitudinal stripes, and the latter with transverse bands 

 like a Zebra. Still it is better to have done this than to have taken the greater liberty 

 of making them spotted.' 



The reverse is not improbably the case, considering that such a large number of 

 American mammals are spotted, including a large proportion of the fav^ns of the Ameri- 

 can Deer. 



^ Given by Professor Flower in Osteology of Mammals, p. 347. 



