area on the surface of the earth on which we
live,--and, as that is the simpler matter, I may take that first. In its
wild state, and before the discovery of America, when the natural state
of things was interfered with by the Spaniards, the Horse was only to
be found in parts of the earth which are known to geographers as the Old
World; that is to say, you might meet with horses in Europe, Asia, or
Africa; but there were none in Australia, and there were none whatsoever
in the whole continent of America, from Labrador down to Cape Horn. This
is an empirical fact, and it is what is called, stated in the way I have
given it you, the 'Geographical Distribution' of the Horse.

Why horses should be found in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and not in
America, is not obvious; the explanation that the conditions of life in
America are unfavourable to their existence, and that, therefore, they
had not been created there, evidently does not apply; for when the
invading Spaniards, or our own yeomen farmers, conveyed horses to these
countries for their own use, they were found to thrive well and multiply
very rapidly; and many are even now running wild in those countries, and
in a perfectly natural condition. Now, suppose we were to do for every
animal what we have here done for the Horse,--that is, to mark off and
distinguish the particular district or region to which each belonged;
and supposing we tabulated all these results, that would be called the
Geographical Distribution of animals, while a corresponding study of
plants would yield as a result the Geographical Distribution of plants.

I pass on from that now, as I merely wished to explain to you what I
meant by the use of the term 'Geographical Distribution.' As I said,
there is another aspect, and a much more important one, and that is,
the relations of the various animals to one another. The Horse is a
very well-defined matter-of-fact sort of animal, and we are all pretty
familiar with its structure. I dare say it may have struck you, that
it resembles very much no other member of the animal kingdom, except
perhaps the Zebra or the Ass. But let me ask you to look along these
diagrams. Here is the skeleton of the Horse, and here the skeleton of
the Dog. You will notice that we have in the Horse a skull, a backbone
and ribs, shoulder-blades and haunch-bones. In the fore-limb, one upper
arm-bone, two fore arm-bones, wrist-bones (wrongly called knee), and
middle hand-bones, ending