EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE 11 
part. The Wild Horse of prehistoric Europe, a small race, 
short-legged and shaggy-haired, was domesticated by man, a fact 
that is known from the rude drawings scratched on bone or ivory 
by men of the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age. But the Domes- 
tic Horse now in use is derived chiefly from the Asiatic race, al- 
though it is probable that in some breeds there is a considerable 
strain of this shaggy, short-legged European race, and it is pos- 
sible also that African races may have been domesticated and to 
some extent mixed with the Asiatic species. The domesticated 
Ass is a descendant of the African species. 
THE EVOLUTION OF THE HORSE. 
The history of the evolution of the Horse through the Ter- 
tiary period or Age of Mammals affords the best known illustra- 
tion in existence of the doctrine of evolution by means of natural 
selection and the adaptation of a race of animals to its environ- 
ment. The ancestry of this family has been traced back to 
nearly the beginning of the Tertiary without a single important 
break. During this long period of time, estimated at nearly 
three millions of years, these animals passed through important 
changes in all parts of the body, but especially in the teeth and 
feet, adapting them more and more perfectly to their particular 
environment, namely the open plains of a great plateau region 
with their scanty stunted herbage, which is the natural habitat 
of the Horse. 
In the series of ancestors of the Horse we can trace every step 
in the evolution of those marked peculiarities of teeth and feet 
which distinguish the modern Horse from an ancestor which so 
little suggests a horse that, when its remains were first found 
forty years ago, the animal was named by the great paleontologist 
Richard Owen, the Hyracotherium or ‘‘Coney-like Beast.’ Its 
relation to the Horse was not at that time suspected by Professor 
Owen, and was recognized by scientific men only when several of 
the intermediate stages between it and its modern descendant 
had been discovered. On the other hand this first ancestor of the 
Horse line is very difficult to distinguish from the contemporary 
ancestors of tapirs and rhinoceroses, and indicates how all the 
