Why, you’d have to change your nature!’
Said the Loxolophodon.
They considered him disposed of
And retired with gait serene,
That was the way they argued
In the early Eocene.”
“Loxolophodon isn’t early Eocene, either,” protested Perry. “It’s a bully rhyme, Father, but it has got scientific kinks.”
“How?”
“Well, take the line, ‘On five toes he scampered.’ Eohippus didn’t have five toes, if I’ve got it right. I know when I stopped at New York, on the way home from that great trip we had in the Fayum, I spent over an hour in that alcove of the horses in the American Museum, and I’m just as sure as I can be that the Eohippus skeleton they exhibited there had only four toes on the forefeet and three on the hind feet.”
