THE ONE BIG DIGIT OF THE HORSE 271 



be no possible difficulty in evolving him out of a ruminant. 

 Palaeontologists, moreover, will tell you that if you go back far 

 enough in time you will find that not only the Horse and the Ox, 

 but also the carnivora, were mixed up in one type. Time is the 

 great factor needed for this evolution, and assuredly there is no 

 lack of it in the universe ! 



The question, then, finally resolves itself into this : — Is the 

 Horse an ' odd-toed ' or an ' even-toed ' rtiammal ? 



The reader may now judge for himself, and furnish the reply. 



Zoologists and palaeontologists have done a great deal to link 

 the present with the past, and so have made a surer basis for the 

 doctrine of evolution. But Professor Huxley'- gives a warning 

 against too hastily concluding that, because no evidence of verte- 

 brate animals has been discovered in certain formations, therefore 

 none existed during the deposit of those formations, for in p. 88 

 he says casts of bones may be the sole record of animals having 

 existed in a formation. This means that the bones themselves 

 have been dissolved away, and have disappeared. If something 

 had occurred to disturb the cast also, no evidence whatever might 

 remain to show that once bones had been buried there. 



At p. 90 he says — ' From the highest animals, whatever they 

 may be, down to the lowest speck of protoplasmic matter in which 

 life can be manifested, a series of gradations, leading from one 

 end of the series to the other, either exists or has existed. Un- 

 doubtedly that is a necessary postulate of the doctrine of evolution.' 



But one might ask — Where are the solid evidences of gradations 

 between protoplasmic matter and the higher animals ? They are 

 only to be found at present in the human brain as inferences 

 from the known available facts. 



1 Lectures on Evolution — ' Science and the Hebrew Tradition. ' 



