A rapid co-ordination of details may now be given. The yew appears to have been held in superstitious respect during the Bronze Age[1083], and it is possible, in the preceding Neolithic period. The Romans and Greeks favoured the tree for its funereal symbolism. The earliest Christians in Britain seem to have adopted the yew as a sacred emblem, occasionally, perhaps, building their churches by its side; and, reverencing it because of its hallowed associations, they employed it for certain gloomy ceremonies. Early Mediaeval symbolists saw in the tree a type alike of death and of resurrection, and the yew actually obtained a position in ritual, and prestige in the Church Calendar. Much later, it crept into the Christmas decorations. Meanwhile, in harmony with the Mediaeval practice of combining the secular and religious life of the community, the yew seems to have been in some instances a trysting-place for open-air assemblies. It sheltered the church fabric from storms, and, at a time when “England was but a fling, But for the eugh and the grey goose wing,” it lent its aid in protecting the country itself. The “sad, unsociable plant” most likely increased numerically—in churchyards, in avenues, and on upland wastes where it had flourished in Pleistocene times but had afterwards disappeared. History tells little of all these incidents, but in the minds of most men, ignorant or learned, there is an instinctive feeling, not dissonant with reasonable probability, that this mysterious, old-world tree derives its dignity and expressiveness from the customs of ages exceedingly remote. Well might Mr William Watson, sitting—not indeed, under some aged tree in a sequestered graveyard, but beneath the shade of the monarch yew near Newlands Corner, in Surrey—sing of the exceeding longevity of these sentinels, which guard their secrets with such jealousy:
“Old emperor yew, fantastic sire,
Girt with thy guard of dotard kings,—
What ages hast thou seen retire
Into the dusk of alien things?
What mighty news hath stormed thy shade,
Of armies perished, realms unmade[1084]?”
CHAPTER X
THE CULT OF THE HORSE
It is probable that the story of the horse fascinates more diverse groups of students than does that of any other domestic animal. Truly, too, has it been said, though with a touch of cynicism, that association with this creature will draw out all that is knavish in man, just as it will encourage acts of the finest heroism. But whether the cynic or the idealist be right, or each partly right, there can be no denial of the leading place taken by the horse in the history of man’s conquest of Nature or in the decisive battles which have determined the supremacy of nations.
To the expert palaeontologist, who prepares the way for the patient workers in zoology and folk-lore, the descent of the horse is attractive because it illustrates, with great beauty and precision, the modern doctrine of development. From an examination of many collections of bones, derived both from the Old and the New Worlds, Huxley and Marsh constructed a general pedigree, of which the details, as discoveries have gradually accumulated, have been filled in by such workers as Sir E. Ray Lankester, Dr C. W. Andrews, Mr R. Lydekker, and Professor J. Cossar Ewart, in Britain, and, in the United States, by Professor R. S. Lull. We begin, far back in the lowest Eocene division of the Tertiary period, with a small hypothetical, or at least unidentified, plantigrade creature, perhaps no larger than a rabbit, with five digits on each of its fore and hind limbs. It would be difficult to produce a specimen of the exact ancestral animal which would satisfy all investigators, but its former existence is doubted by few[1085]. Still keeping to the Eocene formation, though mounting to a higher horizon—the London Clay—we come to Hyracotherium, which was an animal about the size of a hare or very small fox, and which fed on the soft, green vegetation around the margins of lakes and rivers[1086]. Hyracotherium ([Fig. 80]) had four toes on its fore feet[1087], with vestiges, or “rudiments,” as they are unfortunately called, of a fifth. In Palaeotherium of the Upper Eocene, there are three toes only, but these are nearly equal in size[1088]. (It may be well to recall the geological systems of the Tertiary period: they are, in ascending order, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene.) In the Oligocene genus Mesohippus, of which the members were perhaps as large as a sheep, there is still a suggestion of a fourth toe in the fore foot[1089], but the two side toes which are actually discernible do not themselves quite touch the ground. In Hipparion of the Miocene and Pliocene formations, the lateral toes, each terminated by hoofs, were still shorter; and the earlier Anchitherium was in much the same plight. Both the last-named animals are now deemed to be off the direct ancestral line of our present-day horses[1090], but they may stand as early types. Indeed it is difficult to formulate a genealogy which is everywhere accepted. Chiefly owing to the migrations which must have occurred, no complete family tree can be prepared, and all attempts, while true as a whole, are only approximately correct as regards the detailed relationships. The general direction being clear, onward we go, passing creatures as large as a donkey, still preserving vestiges of the lateral toes, till at last we reach the horses of history. The horse which we know
Fig. 80. The ancestors of the horse and its relatives: comparison of sizes and forms.
a. Hyracotherium (Lower Eocene deposits).
b. Plagiolophus (Middle Eocene).
c. Mesohippus (Oligocene).
d. Merychippus (Miocene).
e. Pliohippus (Pliocene).
f. Typical modern domesticated horse (Equus caballus).
From the Amer. Jour. Science, XXIII. p. 167; by the courtesy of Professor R. S. Lull.