The early horse--we may call him so by courtesy, although he was then very far from being a true horse--was an insignificant little creature, apparently far less likely to succeed in life's race than his bulky competitors, and yet, by making the most of their opportunities, his descendants have survived, while most of theirs have dropped by the wayside; and finally, by the aid of man, the horse has become spread over the length and breadth of the habitable globe. [Illustration: Fig. 33.--Skeleton of the Modern Horse and of His Eocene Ancestor.] Now right here it may be asked, How do we know that the little Hyracothere _was_ the progenitor of the horse, and how can it be shown that there is any bond of kinship between him and, for example, the great French Percheron? There is only one way in which we can obtain this knowledge, and but one method by which the relationship can be shown, and that is by collecting the fossil remains of animals long extinct and comparing them with the bones of the recent horse, a branch of science known as Palaeontology. It has taken a very long time to gather the necessary evidence, and it has taken a vast amount of hard work in our western Territories, for "the country that is as hot as Hades, watered by stagnant alkali pools, is almost invariably the richest in fossils." Likewise it has called for the expenditure of much time and more patience to put together some of this petrified evidence, fragmentary in every sense of the word, and get it into such shape that it could be handled by the anatomist. Still, the work has been done, and, link by link, the chain has been constructed that unites the horse of to-day with the horse of very many yesterdays.