Intermediate stages show us an
Upper Eocene animal as big as a fox, with four toes on his front feet
and three behind; a Miocene kind as big as a sheep, with only three toes
on the front foot, the two outer of which are smaller than the big
middle one; and finally a Pliocene form, as big as a donkey, with one
stout middle toe, the real hoof, flanked by two smaller ones, too short
by far to reach the ground. In our own horse these lateral toes have
become reduced to what are known by veterinaries as splint bones,
combined with the canon in a single solidly morticed piece. But in the
pre-Glacial horses the splint bones still generally remained quite
distinct, thus pointing back to the still earlier period when they
existed as two separate and independent side toes in the ancestral
quadruped. In a few cave specimens, however, the splints are found
united with the canons in a single piece, while conversely horses are
sometimes, though very rarely, born at the present day with three-toed
feet, exactly resembling those of their half-forgotten ancestor, the
Pliocene hipparion.
The reason why we know so much about the horses of the cave period is, I
am bound to admit, simply and solely because the man of the period ate
them. Hippophagy has always been popular in France; it was practised by
pre-Glacial man in the caves of Perigord, and revived with immense
enthusiasm by the gourmets of the Boulevards after the siege of Paris
and the hunger of the Commune.
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