Riding and Driving

by Edward L. Anderson; Price Collier

Showing long crowns of teeth

There are other patches of callous skin, sometimes called "chestnuts" or "mallenders," which appear; that on the fore leg is above the wrist joint or "knee," that on the hind leg below the ankle or "hock" joint. These, however, are still puzzles to the scientists, although in an old book on the horse, by Youatt, he speaks of them as diseases and prescribes remedies for their cure.

Huxley maintained that the theory of evolution pointed to the five-toed horse, and he stoutly insisted that the fossil remains of such an animal would some day be discovered, and sure enough we now have in New York City the fossil remains of these prehistoric horses, carrying out, even in minute detail, the steps of development he had outlined. There is the horse with four toes (Plate I.), then the horse with these toes grown shorter, until they hang above the ground, and finally disappear altogether.

Where the horse is left in a state of nature, free to choose the ground over which he will run, the hoof grows just in proportion as it is worn away, and maintains itself without artificial means, in perfect condition. On the other hand, where the horse is turned out on low-lying and moist land, his feet grow to great length. This is the case, for example, in the Falkland Islands, where the whole surface is soft, mossy bog-land; and here the horses' feet grow to be twelve and fourteen inches in length and curl up in various ways, so that the animals can hardly walk upon them. The nails on the fingers and toes of man, if not shortened by abrasion from rough, manual labor, or cut and filed artificially, will grow to great length, and as they grow, curl inward and around the tips of the fingers and toes, attempting to form, what the toe-nail of the horse has formed, a hoof.

Man himself, who has recently taken to walking in a proud manner, only upon his hind legs, reserving his fore legs for painting, writing, gesticulating, and feeding himself, is also gradually losing the toes off his hind feet,—in many persons the little toe being already almost nothing more than a short and useless stump.

When you run your fingers down the fore legs of a horse you may feel distinctly two of his toes tucked away under the skin, and now known as the "splint bones." Where horses are used continuously to work on hard roads, this toe-nail or hoof wears itself away faster than it grows, hence the necessity for shoes.

It is this evolution from a five, and then a four toed animal, to an animal that walks on the nail of the middle toe, which makes the legs and the feet of the horse such a very delicate and difficult problem to the horse owner (Plate II.).

It cannot fail to be of value and interest to every one who deals with horses to trace their development as they increase in stature, and in brain, and with greater and greater complexity of teeth; at the same time that the number of toes decreases, according to the law which rules that the fewer the toes, the greater the speed; the swiftest bird being the ostrich and the fastest mammal the horse (Plate III.).

The teeth of the earliest prehistoric horses were short-crowned and covered with low, rounded knobs of enamel, like the teeth of monkeys, or pigs, or other omnivorous animals, and entirely different from the grinders of the horse of to-day. Along with the development of the legs and feet of the horse, from an animal destined to live in marshy and forest ground, to an animal obliged to take care of itself in open, grassy plains, came a corresponding change in the teeth, from short-crowned, to long-crowned (Plate IV.), enabling the animal to live on the hard, dry grasses which require thorough mastication, before they are of use as nutritious food.