(7/3. I need hardly state here that there is good evidence against
any horse living in America at the time of Columbus.) Mr. Lyell has
lately brought from the United States a tooth of a horse; and it is
an interesting fact, that Professor Owen could find in no species,
either fossil or recent, a slight but peculiar curvature
characterising it, until he thought of comparing it with my
specimen found here: he has named this American horse Equus
curvidens. Certainly it is a marvellous fact in the history of the
Mammalia, that in South America a native horse should have lived
and disappeared, to be succeeded in after ages by the countless
herds descended from the few introduced with the Spanish colonists!
(PLATE 32. FOSSIL TOOTH OF HORSE, FROM BAHIA BLANCA.)
The existence in South America of a fossil horse, of the mastodon,
possibly of an elephant (7/4. Cuvier "Ossemens Fossils" tome 1 page
158.), and of a hollow-horned ruminant, discovered by MM. Lund and
Clausen in the caves of Brazil, are highly interesting facts with
respect to the geographical distribution of animals. At the present
time, if we divide America, not by the Isthmus of Panama, but by
the southern part of Mexico in latitude 20 degrees, where the great
table-land presents an obstacle to the migration of species, by
affecting the climate, and by forming, with the exception of some
valleys and of a fringe of low land on the coast, a broad barrier;
we shall then have the two zoological provinces of North and South
America strongly contrasted with each other.
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