we are to continue the plan of defining the various families of Mammalia.
The genus Equus[1] contains not only the Horse, but the Asses and Zebras. The genus is to be distinguished as regards external characters by the following features:—The body is thickly clothed with hair; there is a more or less bushy tail and mane; the colours are apt to be disposed in stripes of black or blackish upon a yellowish brown ground; this is of course best seen in the Zebras, but the wild Asses also have some traces of it, if only in the single cross-bar of the African Wild Ass, and it is even "reversionary" in the domestic Horse at times. There are no horns upon the forehead or elsewhere; the fore-limbs or both pairs have a callous pad upon the inside, which is possibly to be looked upon as an aborted gland, possibly originally of use as secreting some odorous substance calculated to enable strayed members of the herd to regain their companions. The terminal phalanx of each of the (functionally) single digits is enclosed in a large horny hoof.
The main internal features of structure which divide this genus of Perissodactyles from the Rhinoceros or the Tapir, or from both, are: the existence of strong incisors, three on each side of each jaw; there are canines, but these are small and do not always persist in the full-grown mare. They are popularly known as "tusks" or "tushes." The first of the four premolars (the "wolf tooth") is small and quite rudimentary; it is often absent. As there are three molars, the present genus has the "typical" number of the Eutherian dentition, i.e. forty-four. In the skull the orbit is—as it is not in Tapirs and Rhinoceroses—completely encircled by bone. There is but one functional finger and toe on each hand (Fig. 121 C) and foot; the second and third digits are represented by mere splints, one of which may as an abnormality be enlarged, and reach nearly as far as the well-developed digit. There are even occasionally traces of digit number two.
The Horse, E. caballus, is to be distinguished from its congeners by the small callosities on the hind-limbs which it possesses in addition to the larger ones on the fore-limbs. The hairy covering of the tail is more abundant, as is also the mane. The head too is proportionately smaller, and the general contour
- ↑ Sir W. H. Flower, The Horse, London, 1890.
