Lectures and Essays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 286 pages of information about Lectures and Essays.

Lectures and Essays eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 286 pages of information about Lectures and Essays.

The ulna is complete and quite distinct from the radius, though firmly united with the latter.  The fibula seems also to have been complete.  Its lower end, though intimately united with that of the tibia, is clearly marked off from the latter bone.

There are forty-four teeth.  The incisors have no strong pit.  The canines seem to have been well developed in both sexes.  The first of the seven grinders, which, as I have said, is frequently absent, and, when it does exist, is small in the horse, is a good-sized and permanent tooth, while the grinder which follows it is but little larger than the hinder ones.  The crowns of the grinders are short, and though the fundamental pattern of the horse-tooth is discernible, the front and back ridges are less curved, the accessory pillars are wanting, and the valleys, much shallower, are not filled up with cement.

Seven years ago, when I happened to be looking critically into the bearing of palaeontological facts upon the doctrine of evolution, it appeared to me that the Anchitherium, the Hipparion, and the modern horses, constitute a series in which the modifications of structure coincide with the order of chronological occurrence, in the manner in which they must coincide, if the modern horses really are the result of the gradual metamorphosis, in the course of the Tertiary epoch, of a less specialised ancestral form.  And I found by correspondence with the late eminent French anatomist and palaeontologist, M. Lartet, that he had arrived at the same conclusion from the same data.

That the Anchitherium type had become metamorphosed into the Hipparion type, and the latter into the Equine type, in the course of that period of time which is represented by the latter half of the Tertiary deposits, seemed to me to be the only explanation of the facts for which there was even a shadow of probability.[3]

And, hence, I have ever since held that these facts afford evidence of the occurrence of evolution, which, in the sense already defined, may be termed demonstrative.

All who have occupied themselves with the structure of Anchitherium, from Cuvier onwards, have acknowledged its many points of likeness to a well-known genus of extinct Eocene mammals, Palaeotherium.  Indeed, as we have seen, Cuvier regarded his remains of Anchitherium as those of a species of Palaeotherium.  Hence, in attempting to trace the pedigree of the horse beyond the Miocene epoch and the Anchitheroid form, I naturally sought among the various species of Palaeotheroid animals for its nearest ally, and I was led to conclude that the Palaeotherium minus (Plagiolophus) represented the next step more nearly than any form then known.

I think that this opinion was fully justifiable; but the progress of investigation has thrown an unexpected light on the question, and has brought us much nearer than could have been anticipated to a knowledge of the true series of the progenitors of the horse.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Lectures and Essays from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.