Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Horse: Past and Present
In 1891 the American Museum began its long series of explorations and studies upon the evolution of the horse. It now contains the most complete collection of fossil horses in the world; also a very remarkable collection of mounted skeletons and models of modern horses, including both wild and domestic breeds.
The ancestry of the horse has been traced back through successive stages represented by fossil skeletons to small progenitors with four toes on the fore feet and three on the hind feet, with short-crowned, simple teeth and small brain, but always possessed of great relative speed.
What may be called the fossil breeds are found to be specialized as are modern breeds into exceedingly swift running as well as into slow moving types, into giant horses exceeding the very largest existing percherons, and into diminutive horses smaller even than the most diminutive shetland. The comparison of fossil and living types is therefore most interesting and instructive.
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