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Show SEARCH FOR FOUR-TOED HORSE By FREDERIC J. HASKIN. AVhilo tlio majority of Americans are taking vacations at seashore- or mountain, moun-tain, or pretendinc tlial thej' are cool and comfortable in their own darkonod homes, several sturdy -wise men arc eo-in eo-in carofulb- over tho hills and valluys of WyonrinfT in quest of a four-toed horse. They do not travel with Insso and running noose, expecting to bring him in as docs the Texas cowboy who ropes a wild mustang. Noilhcr will they crate him or send him homo in a jolting cattle or horse car. Nor will thoy put him in a 7.00 if he is found. They hunt for him with pick and shovel in the edges of overhanging cliffs or far below the surfaco of tho earth. Thev will bring him back in a box chat would bo much too small for a Merry Widow hat, each part of him carefully fixed in a matrix. IIo will bo put hi a museum in a glass case and he who uus may read that this is a raro nnd wonderful won-derful thing, whoso price is above rubies. For, vou see, he died something ovor two million years ago, before tho dawn of tho history of mankind in cho world, when this continent was still in the making. This work is in charge of ono of the three expeditions that tho American Museum of Natural History of New York is Ponding out for slimmer ser vice in tho West. Tho first of thes expeditions has gone to Nebraska to study tho fossils of tho Miocene period, and "bring homo tho remains of mammals mam-mals that flourished a million years ago. The party which is to leave next month will head for Montana and look for fossils fos-sils of a period of four million years ago, the specific object being tho acquisition ac-quisition of the complete remains of a horned dinosaur, which they hopo to install in the recently fitted dinosaur room of the museum. Thero is yet no complete specimen of this fossil known. Tho party which left recently is the one that "expects to look for the four-toed four-toed horse, and nlso for its descendant, the three-toed horse. A few years ago these Wyoming beds yielded to enthusiastic paleontologists paleontolo-gists tho fossil remains of a tiny animal ani-mal about the size of a fox terrier. Its front feel showed four distinct toes, its hind feet three. And this proved to be tho remoto ancestor of tho horse of today. Fragment bv fragment, bono by bone, dust by dust, these mon of science worked out the supposed shape. ' color and size of this tiny horse, and through tho generosity of Piernont Morgan Mor-gan were ablo to make a littlo plaster animal that represented the possible appearanco of the Protohinnus. This model stands in the museum in the samo alcove with a Percheron draught horse, and its entire littlo body and tiny Eointcd head do not equal in bulk the ig. benevolent head of tho Percheron. The littlo horse of the Eocene period measured twelve inches at the shoulder. Later ho grew to fourteen inches. Incalculable In-calculable ages passed and his descendants descend-ants of tho Miocene period stood eighteen eight-een inches high and had three toes on each foot. Eons later ho grew taller still, his feet grew harder, and on each wero still three toes, but ho measured almost ten hands at tho withers and his head and neck had grown long. Ono branch of his family at this time, the Ilypohippus. must have looked greatly like a Virginia deer. Time swung on. Where the l'our-toed horse hnd found the fokiqe of the trees in easj reach of his tiny head, nnd where ho had spreading feet to lift him from the soft soil of the tropical forost.hods, his childron of the next two million yonrs had to experience vast changes in their physical makeup to keep paco with the changes of nature. Ago by ago tho spongy, forost-sot lowlands wore raisod higher and higher above tho soa It vol. and with greater altitude, decrease of humidity and increase of coolness, tho rank overhanging vegetation must needs givo placo to jn"assos. As tho trees receded and tho gTasB came, tho descendants of tho littlo Pro-tohippus, Pro-tohippus, too, changed. Tho feet hardened hard-ened to suit tho firmer soil, the legs grew longer and tho heels higher, to allow him to swing over greater difl-tancesj difl-tancesj and the neck grew longer to allow al-low him to roach tho grasses at his feet, while tho teeth changed to suit tho herbage. A wide feeding range was Jiis beforo tho Ago of Ice. lie has left his trail from Escholtz bay on tho north to Patagonia on tho south. From the four-toed little dog-liko animal of tho Eoceno period to tho horse, tho ass and tho zebra of toda-, the only animals that walk on ono toe, has been a long, long way. Tribo by tribe thoy nourished nour-ished and grew extinct as a class, to leave to their posterity tho task of ro-modeling ro-modeling themselves to meet tho mood; of a changing earth. These American horses are geuorally believed to bo the original ancestors of all tho extinct members of tho horso family in the world, but tho fact cannot be definitely definite-ly established until tho Pliocene deposits de-posits of Central Asia have been explored. ex-plored. When the first explorers camo to American shores and penetrated, with the zeal of Spanish conquistador or Spanish missionary priest, the wilds of the new world, all trace of the horse famil3' had gone, nnd so remote in tho past was its disappearance that tho red mon of tho valleys, the hills and plains, had not even a tradition of them, and wero seized with terror at the sight of the queer beasts that the soldiers bestrode. be-strode. Why tho horse and his matos had disappeared so completely science lias not been ablo to answer. Tho prolonged pro-longed winter of tho ice ago may have swept them out of existence. Hunters in some remoto prehistoric timo may have stalked them as thoy did other game, and so havo brought about only tho survival of thoir own cunning. Between Be-tween them on tho one hand and the nowly-comc bison and antelopo on the othor there may have been competition for tho feeding grounds of forest and plain, and the horses may have been worsted. Or possibly prolonged drought or disease took too heavy toll of their number to allow them to ever recoup their losses. As it is, so many members of this world-old family lived and died on this continent, leaving their bones in valley, lake and river bed. that there are vast sections of tho west known to paleontologists paleon-tologists as equns beds. Through theso as through the pages of an illustrated book, American scientists havo traced the evolution of the horse, finding ten difforent genera, and twenty-six different differ-ent species. Even back ot those they havo studied, they some day expect to find another and older member of the family, one that will havo five- toes on its marsh-trekking little foot. This may some da' bo discovered in tho fertile fer-tile fields of the west, for that region is especially rich in fossils of all tho ages of this very old continent. The ex-1 ex-1 isting fossH specimens of the prchis- toric horso family now in tho museum iu Nevr York arc from Nebraska, central cen-tral Oregon, central Florida, southern Texas, from Kansas. Louisiana and Alaska, and ono collection from( tho phosnhale mines near Charleston, South Carolina. The Texas specimens brought back by the expndition of lsfl!) an most liko tho modern horse and show that coneralion to has'e been about the sizo of a draught horso. H The American Museum of Natural History hnd its beginning on April 0. 1809, when an act of the New York. Legislature created it. The cornorstono for the present building was laid by President Grant on June 2. 1S74. and threo years later it was opened to tho public. When nil ihe various wings of tho building aro cvontunlly opened it will occupy the whole eighteen acres of tho tract next to Central Park. As an educative fnctor it 5b one of the leading institutions of tho world, conducting, with tho co-operation of tho city board of education, a sWies of freo lectures nnd 6j)ecial courses of study through tho winters. Last year's records show a total of '176,133 admissions, over 100.-000 100.-000 more than that of any other big musoum in this country, the Smithsonian Smithson-ian Institution and National Muspum at Washington coming next with 3R0.517. Tho study of mammals naturally began be-gan with tho inception of the institution, institu-tion, but it was not until 1801 that the department of vertobrate paleontology was established and the most important expeditions in the interest of fossils were sent out. In Hie Hall of Fossil Mammals the institution makes an effort ef-fort to mnko clear to all the broad, underlying un-derlying laws of nature, and demonstrates demon-strates by comparative anatomy the laws of evolution. Tho exploitation of such n science requires much actual digging. Theso wise men havo dug in the beds of ancient seas for fossils from the Fish Age. They have tramped tirelessly tire-lessly through tho unattractive Bad Lands to note with keen eyes any bit of bono projecting from rocky ledge, or worn bed of some stream. They have ' preserved bones of such p. chalkv nature that the novico stands with mouth agapp at such art. such patience. One special bit of work, noteworthy for the time and care bestowed on it, was that begun in 1S98 and finished in 1905. j 1 An expedition wont to Wyoming in ' 1908 and thero found the bones of a brontasaurus. petrified in a bed of i rock in that region. It took all summer 1 to dig up and pack those bones. Tl took two years more to removo the ' bones from the matrices and reinforco the weak and crumbling parts, then moro time was spent in assorting tho parts, then two years more in articulating articu-lating them, and finally it was mounted ( and ready for exhibition in 1905, when' tho Hall of Dinosaurs was opened and tho monster skeletons that had boon colloetcd since 1897 wero exhibited. ' This world-famous brontasaurus skelc 1 ton measures sixty-eight foot, six inch es long, and fiftcon feet two inches high. In 1900 tho dopartmont of vertebrate paleontology sent an expedition in search of tho threo-toed horse, when the famous Bone Cabin Quarry was opened; in 1901 it sent men "on this samo mission mis-sion to search the beds of Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska: in 1902 it sent fivo expeditions for dinosaurs and cretaceous cre-taceous reptiles; in 19033-1 thoy worked tho Badlands whero the first fossils wero found in 1S70, and brought homo 2P0 specimens of various animals; four expeditious went to South Dakota in 1901; in 190G it sent threo successful expeditions, one to Montnua for dinosaurs, dino-saurs, ono to Wyoming for mammals of the Eoceno period, and ono to .'South Dakota for other a mammals. But this summer's expeditions promise to bo most important of all. Excavating is no longer tho hit or miss performance of a quarter of a cenlur.l ago. but follows fol-lows as clearly dofined rules as any exact science could demand, and such energy and enthusiasm as the present oxpodition carries in its workers must assuredly find substantial reward, if not in a four-tood horse, at least in moro specimons suitable for tho great educational work of the museum. (Copyright, 190S, by Frederic J. llas-kiu.) |