The old world horse was the companion of man. The skeletons of those found with early man in the caves of Europe look as if the horse had been a creature to draw man's burdens and to serve him for food, rather than to bear him upon its back. Its roasted bones are often found about the old tribal fires. Upon the discovery of the new world the Spaniards brought with them to Mexico and to the Mississippi Valley the horses which carried them in their battles against the Indians. In the course of these frays many riders were killed and their horses roamed wild. Slowly they made their way to the western plains; gradually they became tougher and more wiry; their diminished hoofs learned to catch more carefully in the rocks of their mountain home; and the mustang and bronco of more recent years are the descendants of the little dawn horse, whose dainty skeleton is found in the rocks over which his later descendants, after a long stretch of perhaps four million years, are now running. CHAPTER IX EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES SINCE DARWIN In considering the value of Charles Darwin's work and its permanent effect upon the thought of mankind, we must be careful to distinguish between two phases of his effort. It was his aim to prove two propositions: first, that there is such a process as evolution; second, that he had discovered the method by which evolution is accomplished. Before his time there was no general agreement as to the fact of evolution. People generally thought the idea absurd, as well as irreligious. All previous efforts on the part of advanced thinkers to persuade mankind of the truth of evolution had been nearly without effect. Among the early philosophers the whole idea was purely speculative. They made no attempt to prove it, and the conception was without influence upon the thinking of the ordinary man. This remains true until the time of Lamarck. This French genius succeeded in persuading not a few people of the validity of the idea of evolution. He probably could have convinced many more had it not been for the hostility of Cuvier. Accordingly, Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" fell upon a world entirely hostile to the idea, when it thought of it at all. Within fifty years of the publication of this wonderful book, probably the entire scientific world is agreed that evolution, in some form or other, is the undoubted solution of the mystery of creation. The materialist may think of it as a mechanical process relentlessly working itself out without design or purpose. The theist will accept it as the plan by which Eternal Power steadily works. The devout Christian or Jew will see in it God's method of creation. The idea of development has penetrated every science that has to do with animals or man. It is even beginning to influence such inorganic sciences as Physics and Chemistry. We now hear of the evolution of the elements, and the evolution of forces. The world has been persuaded that evolution is true, and this is primarily the