62 



THE HOKSE 



we term the Pliocene epoch there were no true horses 

 in exactly the sense in which we use the word now, but 

 horse-like animals were extremely abundant both in 

 America and the Old World, differing from existing 

 horses in details of teeth and skeleton, especially in the 

 presence of three toes upon each foot, a large middle toe 

 and a smaller one, not reaching to the ground, placed on 

 each side of it. To these animals, the step from the 

 Anchitherium of the early Miocene, mentioned in the last 

 chapter, was not a very great one. 



Unfortunately, when remains of this type were first 

 discovered two generic names were given to them 

 almost simultaneously — Hipparion and Hippotherium, 

 the former being a diminutive of hippos, the Greek for 

 ' horse ' ; the latter a compound of hippos and therion, a 

 wild beast, Latinised to th&rium, a termination very com- 

 monly employed in modern scientific language when coin- 

 ing new appellations for extinct animals. The first name 

 was given by the French palaeontologist Christol ;* the 

 latter by Kaup of Darmstadt. 2 Although Ohristol's ap- 

 pears to have the actual priority, and has been extensively 

 used, especially in France and England, it does not seem 

 to have been accompanied when first brought out by any 

 clear description, and is therefore not acknowledged by 

 many zoological authors, especially in Germany and 



1 Ann. Sci. Indust. Mid. France, vol. i. p. 180 (1832). 



2 Jahrbuch fur Mineralogies &c, 1833, p. 327. 



