Then, after describing his early efforts to trace the descent of the horse from European fossils, Huxley goes on to relate the new light thrown on the matter from the American discoveries of Professor Marsh: 

“You are all aware that, when your country was first discovered by Europeans, there were no traces of the existence of the horse in any part of the American continent.  The accounts of the conquest of Mexico dwell on the astonishment of the natives of that country when they first became acquainted with that astounding phenomenon, a man seated upon a horse.  Nevertheless, the investigations of American geologists have proved that the remains of horses occur in the most superficial deposits of both North and South America, just as they do in Europe.  Therefore, for some reason or other,—­no feasible suggestion on that subject, so far as I know, has been made,—­the horse must have died out on this continent at some period preceding the discovery of America.  Of late years there has been discovered in your Western territories that marvellous accumulation of deposits, admirably adapted for the preservation of organic remains, to which I referred the other evening, and which furnishes us with a consecutive series of records of the fauna of the older half of the Tertiary epoch, for which we have no parallel in Europe.  The researches of Leidy and others have shewn that forms allied to the Hipparion and the Anchitherium are to be found among these remains.  Rut it is only recently that the admirably conceived and most thoroughly and patiently worked-out investigations of Professor Marsh have given us a just idea of the vast fossil wealth and of the scientific importance of these deposits.  I have had the advantage of glancing over the collections in Yale Museum; and I can truly say that, so far as my knowledge extends, there is no collection from any one region and series of strata comparable, for extent, or for care with which the remains have been got together, or for their scientific importance, to the series of fossils which he has deposited there.  This vast collection has yielded evidence bearing on the question of the pedigree of the horse of the most striking character.  It tends to show that we must look to America rather than to Europe for the original seat of the equine series; and that the archaic forms and successive modifications of the horse’s ancestry are far better preserved here than in Europe.

      “Professor Marsh’s kindness has enabled me to put before you a
     diagram, every figure of which is an actual representation of
     some specimen which is to be seen at Yale at this present time.

      “The succession of forms which he has brought together carries
     us from the top to the bottom of the Tertiaries.  Firstly, there
     is the true horse.  Next we have the American Pliocene form of the
     horse (Pliohippus):  in the conformation of its limbs it