The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-09-12
rossns IN INVOLVING.

relics and remains of the far distant pasta past of which the beginning is beyond human knowledge. It al- most seems as If that immense region was at some period--and very long one---the home of all the animals and fowls which are classed under the general title of prehistoric. That term covers a vast stretch of the past, which may extend over six thousand or six million years, for anything the scientists certainly know. or can know.
 American archaeologists have long known the riches and possibilities of the region of country referred to. and many valuable discoveries have been made and many rare specimens found of the animal life of the early periods of time. Wyoming, as we have said, seems to have been the great dumping ground, as it were. of prehistoric ex- istence, and the following late report from Cheyenne will be found interest ing:
 Prof. W. H. Reed, paleontologist of the University of Wyoming, has made important fossil discoveries thirty-five miles southwest of Casper. Among others is the complete seleton of a horse which was no larger than an ordinary fox of this age.
 Another fossil Is perfect and Is q replica of that of the beaver of the present day.
 The complete skeleton of dog of the ~1l A1a Ntaw 1aNzr 1an size of the animal not having differed from that of the average dog of the present but the long, sharp teeth showing that the ancestor of the mod ern canines was a great flesh eater and hunter.
 The professor also dug up the com plete skull of a calf tftanotherium, a monster that was extinct probably l. 100000 years before some of the old est fossils hitherto found were created.
 What is said of the horse is especial ly interesting. As readers of history know there were no horses found on discovered by Europeans. It is related that some of the natives when they first saw a man on a horse thought the two were connected by nature and thus formed a strange and fearful animal If they had ever heard of the fabled Centaur they would have thought some of these strange animals had descended on them from across the seas. That the Creek Indians, for example. had never seen such an anil nal is plain from the name they gave it--a name signifying 'big deer" They were familiar with the deer family and could think of no other animal which the horse resembled, except in size. so they named 1t in accordance with their idea of what 1t most resembled to them.
 This find in wyoming. although not really a new discovery, adds to the opinion that the horse family was native of North America. We say not new, because specimens of this ani- nal have been found and described by American scientists at various times during the past half century or more. They call it eohippus, and say that the first remains were found in what they call the eocene period, but we do not care to go into scientific terms and definitions. It is sufficient to say that they follow the fossils through various geologic ages until they unite him to the horse as we know him.
 One peculiarity about these earlier ancebtors of our horse Is that it had toes. This Cheyenne dispatch does not mention 1t, but the scientists tell us that the eohippus had three toes on it's hind feet and four on the forefeet all as we'll defined as are the toes of any animal of the present day. An- other peculiarity was in the size of these fossil remains, for the wyoming specimen just found agrees in that respects with the description given by Professor Marsh and other American scientists. They all say that the original horse was no larger than modern fox.
 The first curious feature aobut this original animal Is why it should have had toes? Probably the only reason to be given is that in the period in which these animals lived toes were as neces- sary to them as they are to any ami mals of the present day, and that they disappeared as times and conditions changed But the most remarkable and perplexing thing about 1t is to know why, when and how the original fox-like horse grew to the size of the animal of this day. As a general prop osition the far-off ancestors of the animals now existing were much larger than their descendants are. In some specimens, as shown by the fossil dog and beaver found in wyoming, 1t would seem that they have not changed in size. Why did some animals become smaller as time advanced; why did some remain unchanged in size, and why did some increase to many times their original size? Possibly the scientists can explain all these things and they are welcome to the job.
 ! But there is still another feature of this horse business that is not easy to comprehend; or we might better say 1 it is not to be comprehended at all, re tbI, aobipnua xyas raalIv the ances-