155 guineas, Mr. Anstruther Thomson five couples for 30 guineas, with all the brood bitches for 50 guineas and two couples of young ones for 20 guineas. Mr. Boughey went in with 70 guineas for four couples and a half of juveniles, and Mr. Francklin two couples for 10 guineas, The horses sold at very moderate prices.

THE PEDIGREE OF THE HORSE.

At one of the recent Royal Institution “Fridays " Professor Huxley delivered a lecture on what he called the pedigree of the horse. The point of this seemed to be the Darwin theory run mad; while the opening remarks must have been familiar enough to anyone who knew anything of comparative anatomy, or who had ever dipped into any veterinary treatise. The knee, and the wrist, and the elbow, and so forth, are all as old as the hills—or the rocks. It would appear that the original horse had a number of toes or dew-claws, and the Pro. fessor spoke of an American pony that he had inspected with an extra toe to each hoof; as this, he said, was not a freak of nature, but an effort to revert to the pristine type. He might just as reasonably say that a calf born with two heads is throwing back to some remote type. The Professor then traced the horse back to the hipparion, and thence to another animal, or invention, he called the anchitherium ; triumphantly asking if the horse did not succeed the hipparion, was it created afresh, out of nothing? But surely this argument might be extended ad infinitum, as there are, moreover, a number of utterly extinct creatures. The Professor gave no reason or cause whatever for the changes he declared had taken place in the anatomy of the horse, buit merely built up one theory on the top of another, seasoning his address with a few feeble jokes, which, however, took immensely, and illustrating it with some clap-trap specimens of “ horse torture,” otherwise some large flint stones, which looked vastly like an advertisement for the new steam roller. We give a summary of the lecture for what it is worth, while, however it may read, this was terribly wearisome in delivery.

The Professor began by saying that time now travels faster than it used to do. It was now ten years since he had the honour of ad. dressing a public audience on 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 exist. ence, which all youthful organisms in nature have to undergo. On that occasion he succeeded so far in overcoming his natural love for peace and quietness as to advocate what was then a repressed doctrine. Now all was changed. The doctrine which then was regularly refuted and overthrown once in every six weeks had since grown to such an extent that it was now the leading doctrine of most of the first scientific men in Europe, and he thought it would be well to get up a little constitutional opposition to its tenets, for now it entered even into the considerations of its adversaries. The nineteenth century, as far as science was concerned, would be known in history as having given birth to two doctrines-namely, the doctrine of the conservation of force, and the doctrine of evolution as set forth by Charles Darwin. The foundations of the first of these theories are as firmly set as the walls of 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 production of living matter from matter not living; the next is the production of new species by natural selection; the third pillar was historical evidence of living animals succeeding each other in a way which met the requirements of the doctrine. When these three lines of evidence were complete, wbai was now hypothesis would become theory. As regards the first of these we were now in an unsatisfactory state; as regards the second, in spite of an enormous accumulation of probabilities, we yet stand without the direct production of a new species from one common stock ; but as 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 more satisfactorily relied upon than either of the other two. The rocks reveal to us transitional fornis between animals now existing and those long gone, and yield to the philosopher fossils transitional between groups of animals now far apart. At a lecture delivered at the Institution two or three years ago, he had brought under their notice forms transitional between the widely-separated groups of birds and reptiles ; and the reasoning he then adduced had been rendered stronger by subsequent observation, more especially by the discoveries of Professor Cooke of Philadelphia. What was required to forto good historical geological evidence ? Let A, B, and C be three geological strata, each successive one older than the other ; and let X, Y, and Z be groups of animal forms, succeeding each other. If he could show that there was a gradual progression of A X to B Y, and from B Y 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 satisfy critical minds, and at present it would be very injurious to bring forward evidence of a less conclusive nature. But he had one particular case to bring before them, which he thought would stand any amount of worrying, and tearing, and pulling about. The case in question was of particular interest, because it concerned an animal of which Englishmen were exceedingly proud, that is to say-lhe horse. He was told that some among his listeners were on the look-out for what are called “ tips” in his lecture, but on this occasion he was going to treat the subject in a thoroughly scientific way, and none other. All animals and things which were very accurately and delicately balanced were apt to be very beautiful. On the same principle the beauty of the body of the horse probably has much to do with its being one of the best possible pieces of apparatus for running swiftly along the land. In many respects the organization 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-arnı, and this was also the case with most quadrupeds ; but in the horse these two bones were completely fused and bound together into one. In most horses and 889c8 the two bones were soldered together, and he shaft of the ulna

nearly disappeared. The horse's hoof answered 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 rests 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 bones 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 of the upper and lower jaw, some portions of these teeth being harder than other portions, so that each tooth wore unequally in different parts, whereby it always had a rough surface for ginding purposes, something like the face of a millstone. The tooth was composed of ridges and pillars, bone and cement, very curiously arranged with respect to each other, and a set of such teeth made a very efficient mill for the use of the horse. In a very young horec-that is to say, in a horse a foot long, before it was born there were the remains of the ulua 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 spccimen of this kind in the museum of the College of Surgeons. At the present time also there was a South American pony in the Victoria Docks with an extra toe to each hoof, and the toes could be felt by the finger. If these facts 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 complete, although these 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 those 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 cases was probably but a reversion to the type of some remote ancestor ; nevertheless, he did not lay much stress upon this point liimself. Now what did palæontology say to all this? The remains of the horse were found in profusion all over Europe and Asia, and they existed in geological strata of enormous antiquity; they could be traced back to period's long before any indi. cations of the existence of man had as yet been 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 miocene period—a time when the world altogether differed from its present condition as regarded its geographical features—the horse was still found with all its present peculiarities, and the two differ from each other only in minute details. But side by side with the remains of the horse in this deposit were the remains of another horse-like creature, called the “hipparion," or “ little horse." As much was known about the hipparion as about the horse. There was no break in the series of time, for both are found in the same deposit. In the fore limb of the hipparion the big-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 fingers, 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. Did the horse succeed the hipparion? Was it couceivable 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 considerable confidence to his geological remains for the hypothetical ancestor of the bipparion. This ancestor was found in the anchitherium, and its remains were found in the lower miocene, but not in the upper as yet, 80 that there is a 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 ; it has three toes in the fore limb, the two outside ones being half as 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 of 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 the rest of the organization of each being horse-like. He submited, 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 is descended from King Arthur or Noah, the evidence is not worth much. In like manner the history of the horse had been traced by him in the lecture as far back as the Conquest; but he wished to go a little further, and look a little over the edge of certainty, to get some idea of what is lying on the other side. In the eocene period there are remains of animals which are probably remote ancestors of the horso; 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. If Darwin's doctrine can be made out in this one case of the horse, it is strong evidence that similar modifications have taken place in all cases.

A DAY ON THE DART.
ENGRAVED BY 2. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY , W2EKES.

Now try that run below the bridge, friend, carefully. The range at the turn beyond is ruffled by this balmy breeze, and two or three goodly trout lie underneath the high bank opposite-especially at the mouth of the tributary there. Well done! a lively one and good. There ! basket him at once. -PULMAN.