476 
PEDIGREE OF THE HORSE. 
little hoofs or fingers, one on each side of the main hoof, but 
they appeared to have been of no use whatever. The tooth 
was still very horsey, but it was changed nearer to the ordinary 
type. There was therefore, in the upper miocene, an animal 
which resembles the horse in some particulars, and departs 
from it in others. Professor Huxley continued : Did the 
horse succeed the hipparion ? Was it conceivable that the 
one animal was struck out of existence altogether, and that 
the other was then created afresh out of nothing? Was it 
thinkable? If so, he might as well give up his theory alto- 
gether. Having proceeded thus far, the investigator turns 
with considerable confidence to his geological remains to look 
for the hypothetical ancestor of the hipparion. The ancestor 
was found in the anchitherium, and its remains were found 
in the lower miocene, but not in the upper as yet, so that 
there is a greater gap between the anchitherium and the 
hipparion than between the latter and the horse. In the 
anchitherium the leg bones are still more separated ; it has 
three toes in the fore limb, the two outside ones being half as 
big as the middle toe, so that the foot somewhat resembles 
that of the tapir. This animal, therefore, has the fore foot 
which theory requires that it should have. In the hind leg 
the bones are more divided than in the case of the hipparion, 
the hinder feet have three toes, and the teeth have not the 
plasticity of those of the horse, but approach more nearly to 
those of the ordinary type. Thus in these three animals 
there are proofs of gradual progression in teeth, hind legs, 
and fore legs, all the rest of the organization of each being 
horse-like. He submitted, then, that these animals fulfilled 
the conditions which he laid down at the beginning of his 
lecture, and that it was impossible to obtain evidence more 
complete in kind than this of the pedigree and origin of the 
horse. He concluded by remarking that, if Darwin's doc- 
trine is made out in this one case of the horse, it is strong 
evidence that similar modifications have taken place in 
all cases . — Chamber of Agriculture Journal and Farmers ’ 
Chronicle , April 18 . 
