Nephi informs us in his record that, among the other animals which they found in the wilderness upon their arrival at the promised land, was the horse. There have been persons who have declared that because of this statement the record could not be true. They have used this as an argument against the divine origin of the Book of Mormon; for, as they have asserted, the horse was not known upon this continent until it was brought here by the Spaniards. In this way they have tried to prove the record to be false. But recent researches by scientific men have demonstrated beyond the possibility of doubt that America is the original home of the horse, and at certain periods it was occupied with horses of many and various forms. Remains of the true horse as we have it among us at the present time, have been found all over the land. Professor O. C. Marsh, whose patient and intelligent investigations have thrown a flood of light upon this subject, states that the true horse at one time roamed over the whole of North and South America. He believes that it became extinct before the discovery of the continent by Europeans; but, he says, no satisfactory reason for the extinction has yet been given. In fact, he acknowledges that at present it is a mystery why the horse should have been selected for extinction while other mammals no better adapted than it for the surroundings, should have survived. He comments freely upon the strangeness of its disappearance; for he is evidently convinced that when the continent was discovered by Europeans it had disappeared, and that we are indebted for our present horse to the old world, as Europe is called. But we think it is by no means certain that there were no horses on the continent when it was discovered by men from Europe. Robert Dudley, Earl of Northumberland, published a book (_Arcano del Mare_) in Florence, Italy, in 1630, (_1st edition, pp. 46, 47_) to which Rev. Edward E. Hale referred in a paper read by him before the American Antiquarian Society (_Proceedings, October, 1873, p. 93_) in which he states that Sir Francis Drake [B] found many wild horses on the west coast of North America, at which he wondered, because the Spaniards had never found horses in America. Mr. Hale said: