The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

The second line was that of the rhinoceroses, tapirs, and horses, or the uneven-toed animals which have one or three toes on the hind feet. They took to very different means of defence. The Tapirs,[165] large, heavy, and with enormously tough hides, seem to depend chiefly upon their great strength for defence. Starting in warm times in the Old World, they have wandered in their day nearly all over the globe, dying out in later times, till now one kind is left solitary in Sumatra and Malacca, and the remainder have found their way down to South America, where they tear the branches from the trees with their short movable snouts, and feed peaceably at night unless attacked, when they make a furious rush at their enemy and conquer by sheer force.

The rhinoceros, the tapir’s nearest relation, is even better defended; his skin is so thick and hard that in the Indian rhinoceros it actually forms a kind of jointed armour; his skull is wonderfully strong, and his nose is supported by thick bones, on the top of which are one or two solid horns, which are formed by a modification of the hairs of the skin growing matted together.[165]

And now notice, just as we saw that the horned cow has no front upper teeth, so too the rhinoceros, though his horn is of quite a different kind, has in some cases lost his front teeth, which he does not need, since he rushes with his horn at his enemy instead of biting. Like the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros once wandered all over Europe and Asia, and when the great cold came on, the woolly species which roamed far north was often caught in the frost and snow of Northern Asia, where his fleshy body has been found preserved in the ice. Now he too has taken refuge in the warm parts of Asia and Africa, where he either grazes on the plains or plucks the leaves from the trees in the jungle with the fleshy flap of his upper lip.

Fig. 68.

Skeleton of a Wild Ass.

i, incisor teeth; g, grinding-teeth, with the gap between the two sets as in all large grass-feeders; k, knee; h, heel; f, foot; t, middle toe of three joints carrying the hoof; s, splint, or remains of one of the two lost toes; e, elbow; w, wrist; h, hand-bone; 1, 2, 3, joints of the middle toe.

But of all the animals of this three-toed group the Horse has the most interesting history, because we can read it most perfectly. The only certainly original wild animals of the horse tribe now living are the Zebras, Quaggas, and Asses of Asia and Africa; yet strange to say, it was in America that this tribe began, for there we find that tiny pony[166] not bigger than a fox, with four horn-covered toes to his front feet (and traces of a fifth) and three toes on his hind ones. Then, as ages went on, we meet with forms, still in America, first with four toes on the front foot, and then with only three toes on all the feet, and a splint in place of the fourth on the front ones. In the next period they have travelled into Europe, and there, as well as in America, we find larger animals with only three toes of about equal size. One more step, and we find the middle toe large and long, and covered with a strong hoof, while the two small ones are lifted off the ground. Lastly, in the next forms the two side toes became mere splints; and soon after, in America and in Europe, well-built animals with true horse’s hoofs abounded, the one large hoof covering the strong and broad middle toe. For what we call a horse’s knee is really his wrist, and just below it we can still find under the skin, those two small splints (sw) running down the bone of the hand, while the long middle finger or toe, with its three joints (1, 2, 3), forms what we call the foot. It is by these small splints the horse still reveals to us that he belongs to the three-toed animals.[167]

Now while these changes in the toes were going on, the space between the front teeth and eye-teeth gradually increased, till we arrive at the large gap now seen in the horse and ass (see [Fig. 67]). The chief bone of the fore arm (radius) increased in size, and the other bone (ulna) became joined to it, and the same in the hind leg. The brain increased in size mainly in the front part, and the body grew much larger, improving in form and build, till the long, slender, flexible legs became the perfection of running and galloping limbs such as we find in the zebra of to-day, poised upon a strong jointed toe, with its last joint broadened into a firm pad, and covered with a thick nail—the hoof. We have only to compare the well-proportioned leg of a horse with the thick, strong, clumsy leg of an elephant, to see, on the one hand, what a shapely and beautiful limb it has become; while, on the other hand, if we put it by the side of a giraffe’s leg, we must acknowledge at once that it is a far stronger and more serviceable limb than if it had gone to the other extreme. There can be no doubt that when the horse arrived at this point of the strong single hoof and well-shaped body, he had a wide range over the world, both Old and New; but curiously enough, while in Asia and Africa the tribe branched out into many forms, such as asses, quaggas and zebras, in America it died out, so that till we found the fossil-forms,[168] it was thought that no horses had ever been there till they were brought by the Spaniards.

Meanwhile, in the Old World, they must have led as free and joyous a life as those horses do now which have run wild in Tartary and America, galloping, frolicking, feeding, and neighing to each other with delight, as they roamed over the wide plains in troops of thousands, for solitary wanderers they would soon have fallen a prey to wolves or jaguars; and if the mothers wished to protect their foals they had to learn to follow one leader and act together in time of danger.