ancje:stry of the horse. 287 



liquid state, had cooled down, and the action of physical 

 causes, such as wind and water, had commenced to form 

 sedimentary rocks, in which the bones and other remains of 

 existing animals became entombed as fossils. Thus, through 

 countless ages, a history of animal and also of vegetable life 

 has been written in stone by the hand of time, The last leaves 

 of this book lie uppermost, while the first ones repose on fused 

 rock, of which granite is a familiar example. This history is 

 divided by scientific men into the Primary, Secondary, and 

 Tertiary periods, of which the last-mentioned is the only one I 

 shall take into account ; as, during it, hoofed animals appeared 

 for the first time on the earth. The tertiary period is divided 

 into the Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene periods ; 

 the Eocene being the most ancient ; and the Pleistocene the 

 one immediately preceding historic times. In searching 

 through the records of the past, an examination of fossil feet 

 is particularly interestmg ; for we can obtain from it direct 

 and clearly expressed evidence respecting the capacity of 

 movement possessed by the animals which walked on the 

 earth many thousands, if not millions, of years ago. 



Before beginning, I may remind my readers that the 

 knee of the horse corresponds to our wrist (p. 27); and his 

 fore fetlock to the row of knuckles nearest to the wrist 

 Instead of having, as in our hand, five metacarpal bones 

 between the knee and fetlock, he has only one entire bone 

 (the cannon-bone), and two rudimentary (or splint) bones. I 

 may remark that in the hind limb, the bones between the 

 hock and hind fetlock are called metatarsal bones. Each of 

 our five metacarpal and metatarsal bones is furnished with 

 a digit, a synonym for either a toe or a finger ; but in the 

 ordinary horse the cannon-bone only is provided with a 

 digit. The bones of each digit (the phalanges) are num- 

 bered from above downwards. Thus the long pastern-bone 

 (Fig. 12) is called the first phalanx ; the short pastern-bone, 

 the second phalanx ; and the pedal or coffin-bone, the third 

 phalanx. 



If we examine the bones of the horses limbs from, respec- 



