THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE HORSE. 
27 
evidence of organic existence was, setting aside the infusoria, a 
few fuci, mollusca, and polyparia : these were followed by a large 
development of the same order. In the succeeding period, reptiles 
and insects appear, with sauroid fishes, and an immense develop- 
ment of vegetable life, particularly the cryptogamia class, such as 
mosses, ferns, &c. Large reptiles did not then prevail to an extra- 
ordinary degree at this epoch in what are now the temperate regions 
of southern England — the weald of Sussex and Dorsetshire for ex- 
ample ; but a very long time afterwards these spots were peopled by 
monsters of an extraordinary character, which stalked amid marshy 
forests of a luxuriant tropical vegetation, or floated on the genial 
waters. This state continued for a long period of time, when another 
change took place, and the country and its inhabitants were swept 
away. An ocean had usurped its place ; and then, after another long 
period of time, and the dry land had again appeared, it became 
covered with groves of forests, and herds of deer, and of oxen of enor- 
mous size. Groups of elephants, mastodons, horses, and other herbi- 
vorous animals, occupied its plains; its rivers and marshes were 
crowded with the hippopotamus, the tapir, and rhinoceros ; and its 
forests afforded shelter to the hysena, the bear, and the tiger. 
This is the period when the horse first appeared on the stage of 
life, being the one subsequent to the last grand catastrophe, as it is 
frequently but incorrectly called, by which the earth was said to be 
overwhelmed, 
“ Ere Adam was, or Eve the apple ate.” 
We must now confine ourselves more closely to this particular 
period, being the one immediately antecedent to the present order 
of things. 
In almost every part of the globe, beneath the present or modern 
alluvial soil (which is a loose strata constantly deposited by streams 
and rivers), extensive beds of gravel, clay, and loam are found, 
spread over the plains, or in the flanks of the mountain chain, or 
in the crests of ranges of low elevation : and in these accumulations 
of water-worn materials — termed by Dr. Buckland, diluvium, and 
by Cuvier, alluvium — are immense quantities of the bones of large 
mammalia. These remains belong principally to the mastodon and 
the elephant, to various species of hippopotamus and rhinoceros, to 
the horse, ox, deer, and many extinct genera ; while in caverns 
and fissures of rocks, filled with calcareous breccia, the skeletons of 
tigers, boars, gigantic hyaenas, and other carnivorous animals, are 
imbedded. They have been found alike in the tropical plains of 
India, and in the frozen regions of Siberia, while there is no con- 
siderable district of Great Britain in which some traces of them do 
not occur. These remains are not always found together. Cuvier, 
