Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/216

Rh geology. Especially valuable are his discoveries of the existence of the form of horse that abounded in that region in the Miocene age, "a genus of three or four species, varying in size from that of a Newfoundland dog twenty five to twenty-seven inches in height to that of a small donkey. There were three continuous sets of bones in each lower leg, joined to as many separate hoofs, while in the living horse two of the hoof attachments are only rudimentary, their functions being lost."

These, with many other rare specimens were discovered by Doctor Condon and his assistants in the region of John Day river in Grant County, and are carefully preserved in the State University of Oregon. Doctor Condon says of this horse, "many of these fossils indicate a really beautiful little animal of graceful outline about the size of an antelope, bringing to that early period a truthful prophecy of the highest type of our present horse. And so abundant were they on the hills of Shoshone that fragments of skeletons are found in nearly all its fossil beds. In his description of one of these fossils Doctor Condon says "it was of this handsome specimen from John Day that an experienced stableman once exclaimed, "Full mouth, five years old past. Horse? By George, it is!"

The Geological Revelations Yet to he Made by investigators will be of supreme interest and value and will add immeasurably to the amount of knowledge at the service of the human family. Of this subject in general Dr. Condon said: "One can scarcely study such a form, as he loosens fragment after fragment from a crumbling hillside, without