e seen at the American Museum of Natural
History, New York, where also the evolution of tapirs,
camels, llamas, rhinoceroses, dinosaurs, great ground sloths
and other animals are clearly to be traced--in most cases by
remains discovered in America. A capital book on the theme
broached by Professor Huxley is "Animals of the Past," by
Frederic A. Lucas, Curator of the Division of Comparative
Anatomy, United States National Museum, Washington, D. C.,
published by McClure, Phillips & Co., New York.

"The Life and Letters of Professor Huxley," edited by his
son, Leonard Huxley, is a work of rare interest: it is
published by D. Appleton & Co., New York.]

The occurrence of historical facts is said to be demonstrated, when the
evidence that they happened is of such a character as to render the
assumption that they did not happen in the highest degree improbable;
and the question I now have to deal with is, whether evidence in favour
of the evolution of animals of this degree of cogency is, or is not,
obtainable from the record of the succession of living forms which is
presented to us by fossil remains.

Those who have attended to the progress of palaeontology are aware that
evidence of the character which I have defined has been produced in
considerable and continually-increasing quantity during the last few
years. Indeed, the amount and the satisfactory nature of that evidence
are somewhat surprising, when we consider the conditions under which
alone we can hope to obtain it.

It is obviously useless to seek for such evidence, except in localities
in which the physical conditions have been such as to permit of the
deposit of an unbroken, or but rarely interrupted, series of strata
through a long period of time; in which the group of animals to be
investigated has existed in such abundance as to furnish the requisite
supply of remains; and in which, finally, the materials composing the
strata are such as to insure the preservation of these remains in a
tolerably perfect and undisturbed state.

It so happens that the case which, at present, most nearly fulfils all
these conditions is that of the series of extinct animals which
culminates in the horses; by which term I mean to denote not merely the
domestic animals with which we are all so well acquainted, but their
allies, the ass, zebra, quagga, and the like. In short, I use "horses"
as the equivalent of the techn