Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/274

260 are usually regarded as a serious detriment to the animal, they are generally removed from the colt soon after birth; but, in such cases, the enlarged splint-bones not unfrequently indicate in the adult their former existence. Numerous cases of extra digits in the horse have been recorded, and in nearly all of them a single lateral hooflet was present on one of the forelegs."

Professor Marsh states that the first recorded instance of extra digits in the horse known to him are two mentioned by George Simon Winter, in his famous book on horses, published at Nuremberg in 1703. One of the horses referred to, and figured in this work, was "eight-toed," having a small extra digit on the inside of each foot. Winter states that this horse was exhibited in Germany in 1663, and a portrait of it preserved in Cologne. His account was derived from a person who had examined the animal. The other horse described by Winter had a small hoof in the inside of each fore-foot; and this steed, Winter states, he had not only seen but ridden. Other instances of this phenomenon are referred to, on the authority of Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, Owen, and Leidy.



Professor Marsh has described an interesting case of this reversion in the horse, which he has personally examined, and which is represented in Fig. 2. He says: "This animal was on exhibition in New