no scientific evidence, and it is not pretended that there is the slightest evidence of any other kind that such successive creation has ever taken place. When I was investigating this subject only the collections in Europe were accessible to me, but the materials they yielded led me to think that the horse must have descended from an Anchitherium-like ancestor, and I may say, as I happen to know by correspondence with him, that very eminent anatomist, the late Prof, Lartet, of Paris, had arrived independently at the same conclusion. Indeed, the story is so plain that no one deserves any particular credit for drawing so obvious a conclusion. And since then paleontological inquiry has not only given us greater and greater knowledge of the series of horse-like forms, but enabled us to fill up the gaps in the series, and to extend that series farther back in time.
That knowledge has recently come to us, and assuredly from a most unexpected quarter. You are all aware that when this country was first discovered by Europeans there were no traces of the existence of the horse in any part of the American Continent. And, as is well known, the accounts of the earlier discoveries dwell upon the astonishment of the natives when they first became acquainted with that astounding phenomenon—a man seated upon a horse. Nevertheless, as soon as geology began to be pursued in this country, it was found that remains of horses—horses like our European horses—like the horses which exist at the present day—are to be found in abundance in the most superficial deposits in this country, just as they are in Europe. For some reason or other—no feasible suggestion on that subject, so far as I know, has been made but for some reason or other the horse must have died out on this continent at some period preceding—how long we cannot say—the discovery of America by the Europeans. Of late years there have been discovered on this continent—in your Western Territories—that marvelous thickness of tertiary deposits to which I referred the other evening, which gives us a thickness and a consecutive order of older tertiary rocks admirably calculated for the preservation of organic remains, such as we had hitherto no conception of in Europe. They have yielded fossils in a state of preservation and in number perfectly unexampled. And with respect to the horse, the researches of Leidy and others have shown that numerous forms of that type are to be found among these remains. But it is only recently that the very admirably contrived and most thoroughly and patiently worked-out investigations of Prof. Marsh have given us a just idea of the enormous wealth and scientific importance of these deposits. I have had the advantage of glancing over his collections at New Haven, and I can truly and emphatically say that, so far as my knowledge extends, there is nothing in any way comparable, for extent, or for the care with which the remains have been got together, or for their scientific importance, to the series of fossils which he has brought together. (Applause.) This enormous
