The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-04-16 00:00:00

PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE
PEDIGREE OF THE HORSE.

On Friday night Professor Huxley delivered a lecture at
the Royal institution, London, before a very Loge audience,
upon •' The Pedigree uf the Horse." Sir Henry Holland, Part ,
F. R S., presided.
Professor Huxley bers.n br saying that time now
travels faster than it need to do. It was now ten
years since he bed the honour of addressing a public
audience en the origin of species and the theory of
evolution due to the genius of Charles Darwin. At
that time the theory was passing through the trial,
through the struggle for existence, which all youthful
organisms in nature have to undergo. On that occa-
sion he succeeded no far in overcoming his natural love
for peace and quietness— (laughter)—aa to advocate
what was then a r,prsesed doctrine. Now all was
changed. The doctrine which then was rewaltrly
refuted and overthrown once in every pis weeks had
since grown to such an eetent that it was now the
leading doctrine or trost of the first scientific men in
Europe, and be thought it would be well to get up •
little constitutional opposition to its tenets, for now it
entered even into the considerwris of its adversaries.
The nineteenth century. as far as science Was Con-
cerned, would he known in history as having given
birth to two doctrines—namely, the do trine of the
coneervation of force and the doctrine of evolution .8
set forth by Charles Darwin. The foundations of the
first 44f these theories are as firmly set as the walls 4,1
the Royal Institution, but the other is not yet on quite
such a stable footing. The doctrine rests upon three
pillars of observation and experiment. The first of
these is the produc.ion cf living matter from matter
not living; the next is the production of now species
by natural selection ; the thire paler was historical
evidence of living animals sucaeeding each other in a
way which met the requirements of the doctrine.
When these three lines of evidence were cvniptete
what was now hypothesis would breeme theory. As
regards the first of these es•fs 'Orers now in an
unsatisfactory slates ca regards the second,
in spite of an enormous accumulation of pro.
babilities, we yet stand without the direct pro-
duction of a new species from one common stock;
but se regards the third point, which not long since
was the weakest of all, it is now, in a sense, the head
stone of the corner, and may be were tatisfactorily
relied upon than tither of the uther two.

The rocks reveal to us transitional forms between
animals now existing and those long gone, and yield to
the philosopher foloils transitional between groups of
anitualn now far apart. At a lecture delivered at the
institution two IT three ye ire ago' he had brought un-
der their notice forms transitional between the widely.
separated groups of birds and reptile.; and the reason.
leg he then adduced had been rendered stronger by
subsequent observation, more especially by the dis-
coveries of Professor Cooke, of Philadelphia. What
was required to form good historical geological evi-
dence? Let A, a and C be three geological stria.,
each successive one older than the other; and let X,
Y, Z be groups of animal forms, succeeding each other.
If he could show that there was a gradual progression
of AX toll Y, and from BY to C Z, it was the
highest kind of proof which could be given. But it is
exceedingly hard to find evidence of this kind good
enough to satiate crhical minds, and at present it
would be very injurious to bring forward evidence of a
lees conclusive nature.

But he had one particular came to bring before them,
which bethought would stand any amount of worrying,
and tearing, and pulling about. Tee case in question
was of particular interest, because it concerned an,
animal of which Englishmen were exceedingly protd,
that is to say—the horse. He waa told that some
among his listanere were on the look-out for what are
called "tips" in his leoture—(laughter)--but on this
occasion he was going to treat the subject in a
thoroughly ecientitic way, and none other. All
animals and things which were very accurately
and delicately bslanciel were apt to be very beautiful.
On the same principle the beauty of the body of the
horse probably ham much to do with it, being
one of the best possible piecea of apparatus for
running swiftly along the land. In many respects
the organisation of the horse departed in an
extraordinary way from what may be called "the
average quadruped," and the peculiarities to which he
desired to call special attention were those of the fore
limbs, the hind limbs, and the teeth. What was called
the" knee" of the horse was in reality the wrist of the
animaL Human beings had two bones in the fore-arm,
and this was also the case with most quadrupeds, but in
the horse them two bones were completely fused and
hound together into one. In most horses and asses the
two bones weie soldered together, and the ahaft of
the ulna nearly disappeared. The horses hoof 'to-
wered to the fingers of the human hand, only in
the hoof some of the bones and fingers of the hand were
missing, and the horse in reality reels upon the end
of the nail of the middle finger. What has become
of the other fingers? Two of them were taken
away, and two of the other hones were reduced to
little splints, which could be seen from the outside of
the horse's foot. This peculiarity was found only in
these animals, In the hind legs of the horse the
small bone was reduced as in the fore-legs, and the
middle toe was there with its nail made into a hoof.

The horse had also a peculiar construction of the
grinding teeth if the upper and lower jaw, ro me poi,
tiona of these tseth being harder than other portions,
no that each tooth wore unequally in diffrrent parts,
whereby it always had a rough surface for grinding cur.
pone, something like the face of a millstone. The tooth
waa composed of ridges and pillars, bone and cement, very
curiously arranged with respect to each other, and a
set of en ,h teeth made a very efficient mill for the use
of the horse. In a very young horse—that is to say, in
a horse a foot long, before it was born—there were the
remains of the ulna much more complete than in the
grown animal, and in the young horse the rudiments of
the toes were larger in proportion than in the adult.
Sometimes horses were born with extra toes, and there
was a specimen of this kind in the museum of the
College of Surgeons. At the present time also there
wax a South American pony in the Victoria Docks
with an extra toe each hoof, and the toes could be
felt by the linger.
• " ' •

If three fac-is were interpreted by the doctrine of
evolution, what did it say' It said that the missing
toes of the horse must have vanished from some animal
preceding the horse, which had the normal number of
toes, and that the ancestors of the horse must at one
time have had the leg and foot bones crimplete, although
theme were blotted out before the horse was turned into
a perfect running machine. It also said that at one
time the teeth of the horse must have resembled thee.,
of other herbivorous animals. It also said that the
young or embryonic form often resembled the common
form, more than the adult animal did. The extra toe
in some eases, was probably but s reversion to the type
of some remote anisestor—neverthelese, he did not lay
miles stress upon this point himself.
bow what did palaeontology say to all this? The
remains of the horse were found in profusion all over
Europe and A4,,5, and they existed in geological strata
of enormous antiquity; they could be traced back to
period, long before any indications of the existence of
man had as yet linen found, yet the horses and asses
of that remote period resembled in nearly every respect
the horses and asses which now ran wild in many parts
of Asia and Africa. On going still further back to the
upper micieene period—a time when the world alto.

gether differed from its present condition as regarded
' its geographical features—the horse watt still found
with all its present peculiarities, and the two differ
from each other only in minute details.
But side by side with the remain, of the horse in
this deposit were the remains of another horse-like
creature called the " hipparion " or "little horse."
As much wax known about the hipparion as about the
horse. There was no break in the series of time, for
b ith are found iis the saute deposit. In the fore limb
of the hipparion the leg bones were united, but the
extra one was traceable, and the leg bones were nearer
to the average type; the animal also had two little
hoofs or fird4ers, 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 annexed
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
altogether.
Having proceeded thus far, the investigator turns
with eonsiderable confidence to his geological remains
to look fir the hypothetical ancestor of the hipparion
This ancestor was found in the anchitherium, and its
remains were found in tho lower rulocene, but not in
the upper se yet, so that therein &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 i it has three toes in the
fore Huth, the two outside ones being half ai 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 if 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 toe
rest of the organisation 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. If a man says that he can trace
his pedigree back to the time of the Conquest—well,
there is no harm in that; but if he says that he has
descended from King Arthur or Noah, the evidence is
not worth much. In like manner the history of the
horse hail been traced by him in the lecture as far back
am the Conquest : but he wished to go a little further,
and look a little over the edge of c-rtainty, to get 6011113
Idea of what is lying on the other side. He then
pniuted out that in the eocene period there are remain
of animals which are probably remote ancestors of the
horse; the plagiolophus minor to wit. This animal
more approaches the rodents in type, but it differs
from the horse only in degree, and not in kind.
He concluded by remarking that if Darwin's doctrine
is wade out in this one case of the horse, it is strong
evidence that similarmodifications have taken place in
all capes.

A number of large flint stones, with jagged edges,
were shown as specimens of the agencies of pain to
besets of burthett which are in daily use in the South
of Loudon. The inscription on the black board in
juxtaposition with which they were placed was: "In-
struments of horse torture employed in the lath century
on the roads of the South of London, within the four-
mile radius from Charing-cross. April, 1870." It was
urg, d that by the use of the steam roller all these stones
could be crashed into the earth.