for cavalry in horses and men is an excellent national investment. In addition to my chapters on the breeding of various types I have added several others on the keeping, handling and using of horses so that if an owner have only this one book, he may be able to have at least a little useful information of many sorts and kinds. THE HORSE IN AMERICA CHAPTER ONE PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HORSES The paleontologists tell us that the rocks abound with fossils which show that Equidæ were numerous all over America in the Eocene period. These were the ancestors of the horse that was first domesticated, and though there were millions of them on the Continent of North America in the period mentioned there were no horses here at all when Columbus made his great discovery, and the first explorers came to find out what this new India was like. The remains of the prehistoric horse, when first found, baffled the naturalists, and he was called by Richard Owen Hyracotherium or Hyrax-like-Beast. The first fossils discovered showed that the horse was millions and millions of years ago under twenty-four inches in stature, with a spreading foot and five toes. In his development from this beginning the horse furnishes one of the most interesting examples of evolution. When he had five toes he lived in low-lying, marshy land and the toes were needed so that he could get about. He had a short neck and short jaws, as longer were not needed to enable him to feed on the easily reached herbage. As the earth became harder, the waters receding, his neck and jaws lengthened, as it was necessary for him to reach further to crop the less luxuriant and shorter grasses. He lost, also one toe after another so that he might travel faster and so escape his enemies. These toes, of course, did not disappear all at once, but grew shorter, until they hung above the ground. The “splint bones” on a horse’s legs are the remains of two of these once indispensable toes, while the hoof is the nail of the last remaining toe. As the neck of the horse grew longer and two toes had been dropped, the legs lengthened and by the time he became what the scientists call a “Neohipparion” he was about three feet high, and his skeleton bore a very striking resemblance to that of the horse of to-day. The teeth also changed with the rest of the animal. In the earliest specimens discovered the teeth were short crowned and covered with low, rounded knobs, similar to the teeth of other omnivorous animals, such as monkeys and hogs, and were quite different from the grinders of the modern animal. When the marshy lands of the too-well watered earth had changed into grassy plains the teeth of the horse also changed from short crowned to long crowned, so that they could clip the shorter and dryer grasses and grind them up by thorough mastication into the nutritious food required for the animal’s well being.