Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1874-05-21

Ancestry OF tno Noole AH.1A-Ine Mor.
Abomt the Size Of klttens-Tho Family
Tree Of tho Horse.
From the New York Tribune.
Few facts in the history of the race
have been the occasion of wider gener-
alizations than the circumstance that
the horse most important of all
the animals which man has pressed into
his service-was utterly unknown on
the continent of America at the time of
the discoveries of Columbus. Not only
the horse, but all the related family
the ass, the zebra, and the quagga-
were equally wanting. The Western
hemisphere, in this total deficiency of
both it's divisions, presents marked
contrast to the Old World, since Eu-
rope, Asia, and Africa are each the ma
tive habitation of one or more members
of this large family.
But the recent labors of science have
opened new page in the horses his
tory, and have changed entirely the
scope and nature of the inquiry. It is
now known that in the eras with which
geology deals, America was not only for
countless ages the home of the horse,
but of au immense variety of animals of
the horse family or nearly allied to it;
and in the long series of these varying
forms there seems to be presented evi-
dence of change, progress and develop
ment, which is welcomed by tho be-
Levers in the theory of evolution as
supplying many of the missing links in
the ancestry of the noble animal.
Foremost among the laborers in this
special field of research is Prof. o. G.
Marsh, of Yale College. Readers of the
Tribune have had descriptions of his
explorations at the West, and it will be
only necessary here to summarize them
in few words. Almost every summer
for some years past he has organized
an exploring party, chiefly at his own
expense, in quest of fossil animal re-
mains in the tertiary formation in our
Western Territories. He has met with
unexampled success. Agreater addition
of new fossil animal forms has been
made since this class of explorations
was undertaken than at any similar
period since Cuvier described the ex-
tinct animals of the Paris basin. A few
of the extraordinary creatures which
Professor March has identified have
/ UCOu O5SCI1UcU Ill GIO
His expedition last summer was pecu-
liarly rich in discoveries of fossils of
the horse family. It is to these the
present letter relates.
Did the horse exist in America after
the advent of man and become extinct
between that period and the date of the
discovery of America? This is ques-
ton of more interest than would be at
first supposed. The horse of Europe
was probably cotemporary with the
earliest man, and there are traces of
the existence of that animal among
some of the most ancient relics of the
cave-dwellers. In the cavern of La
Madelnine, Dordogne, France, among
the remains of prehistoric man of the
Flint period, the antler of a reindeer
was found having seven figures OF
horses carved upon it. Coarsely exc
cuted though they are, there can he no
question as to what these flint carvings
were intended to represent. These are
horscs-not asses, nor of the ass fan,i-
~, since the ears are short, none of the
tails are tuftea, and ono of the tnils
certainly indicates by its thickness Tint
it had the abundant long hair covering
it which distinguishes the horse. It is
not at oil likely that the cave-dwelling
man held the horse in subiection; but