The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-12-26
ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE
HIS GENEALOGY is LONGER THAN
THAT OF NEW YORIx's 400.
Was once n Little Animal-Had Four
Than a Fox-Eyidence OF Descent.

zine, presents III q pOpuidr way tne SCieh-
tifc evidence going 20 show the descent of
the horse from a little animal with four
toes and little bigger than a fox. The
family records of the horse reach
for something like 100000 years.
The early horse-we may call him so by
courtesy, although he was then far from
being a true horse-was an Insignificant lit
tie creature, apparently far less likely TO
| succeed in life's race than his bulky COM
| p%etitors, and yet, by making the most OF
their opportunities. his descendants have
survived, while most of theirs have dropped
| by the waysiGe; and finally, by the aid of
| man. the horse has become spread over the
length aud breadth of the habitable globe.
Now ri. hit here it may be asked, how 40
we know that the little hyracothere was
| the progenitor Of the horse, and how can
T. be shown that there is any bond of kin
ship between him and, for example, the
| French Percheon? There is only one way
in which we can obtain this knowledge, and
but one method by which the relationship
| can be shown, and that is by collecting the
fossil remains Of animals long extinct and
comparing them with the bones of the re-
cent horse, a branch of science known as
| paleontology. II has taken a very long
time to gather the necessary evidence. and
ii has taken a vast amount of hard work
in our Western territories, for "the coun-
| try that is as hot as hades, watered by
stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably
| the richest in fossils" Likewise it has
called for the expenditure of much time
and more patience to put together some
of this petrified evidence, fragmentary III
every sense of the WORD, and get IT into
4 SIICh shane that III could be handled Dy
the anatomist. Still, the work has been
cone, and, link by link, the chain has been
constructed that unites the horse OF To-
day with the horse of very many yester-
days.
REMAINS IN REMOTE AGES.
The first links i'm this chain are the re-
mains of the bronze age and those found
among the ruins of the ancient Swiss lake
dwellings,; but earlier still than these are
the bones of horses found abundantly in
northern Europe, Asia and America. The
individual bones and teeth of some of these
horses are scarcely distinguishable from
those of to-day. a fact noted in the name.
equus frateaus, applied to one species;
and when the teeth alone are found IL is at
times practically impossible TO say whether
they belong TO a fossil horse or to a mod
ern animal. But when enough scattered
bones are gathered to make a fairly COM
plete skeleton ii becomes evident that tho
fossil horse had n proportionately larger
head and smaller feet than his existing rel
alive, and that he was a little more like an
ass or zebra, for the latter, spite his gay
coat, is a near relative of the lowly ass.
Moreover. primitive man made sketches OF
the primitive horse, just as he did of the
mammoth, and these indicate that the
horse of those days was something like an
overgrown Shetland pony, low and heavily
built, large-headed and rough-coated. For
4 the old ca N0-6WPllprS of E.QTOna We're lntl-
mately acquainted with the prehistoric
horses, using them for food. as they did al
most every animal that fell beneath their
flint arrows and stone axes. And if one
may judge from the abundance of bones,
the horse must have roamed about in
bands, Just as the horses escaped from civ
i~liZation roam, or have roamed. over the
pampas of South America and the prairies
of the West.
The horse was just as abundant in North
America in pliestocene time as in Europe;
but there is no evidence to show that it
was contemporary with early man in North
America, and even were this the case, it is
generally believed that long before the dis
covery of America the horse had diSap-
peared.
DOMESTICATED IN EUROPE.
Long before the dawn of history the horse
was domesticated in Europe, and Caesar
found the Germans, and even the old Brit
ons, using war chariots drawn by horses
f@NO
of the horse was to aid him in killing off
his fellow-man. and not until comparatively
modern times was the animal employed in
the peaceful arts of agriculture. The i'm
mediate predecessors of these horses were
considerably smaller, being about the size
and build of a pony. but they were very
much like a horse in structure, save that
the teeth were shorter. AS they lived dur
L Ing nlincQnQ times fhQv haUa haan onn
"pliohinnuS."
Going back into the past a step fur
Their, though a pretty long step IL we
reckon by years, we come upon a num-
Der of animals very much like horses. save
for certain cranial peculiarities and the
fact that they had three toes on each
foot, while the horse, as everyone knows.
has but one toe. Now, If we glance at the
skeleton Of a horse we will see on either
side of the common bone, in the same
situation OF the upper part of the little toes
OF the hippotherium, as these three-toed
horses are called, a long slender bone,
termed by veterinarians the splint bone;
and it requires no anatomical training 10
see that the bones in the two animals are
the same. The horse lacks the lower part
OF his side toes. that is all. just as man
will very probably some day lack the last
bones of his little toe. We find an ap-
proach to this condition IN some of the
in which the side toes are quite small, fore
shadowing the time when they shall have
disappeared entirely. 1t may also be noted
here that the splint bones of the horses
of the bronze age are a little longer thar
those OF existing horses, and that they
are never united with the large central toe
while nowadays there is something of a
tendency for the three bones to fuse into
one, although part Of this tendency the
writer believes to be due to Inflammation
set up by the strain of the pulling and
hauling the animal is now called upon tc
do. Some OF these three-toed hippotheres
are not in the direct line of ancestry OF
the horse, but are side branches on the
family tree, having become so highly spe.
cialized in certain directions that no fur
ther progress horseward was possible.
Backward still. and the bones We find In
the miocene strata of the West, belong
ing to those ancestors of the horse to
which the name OF mesophippus has been
given because they are midway in time and
structure between the horse of the past and
present, tell us that then all horses were
small and that all had three toes on a foot,
while the ~forefeet bore even the suggestion
of q fourth toe. Frcm this to our eocene
hyracothere with -four toes Is only another
longtime step. We may go even beyond
this in time and structure and carry back
the line Of the horse to animals which only
remotely resembled him and had five good
toes to a foot; but while these contained
The possibility Of a horse, they made nc
show of IL.
EVIDENCE OF GENEALOGY.
We have, then. this direct evidence as to
the genealogy of the horse. shat between
the little ecoene hyracothere and the mod.
ern horse we can place a series of animals
by which we can mass by gradual stages