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They were discovered in a mass of DEBRIS of all kinds, forming a very hard conglomerate. Some teeth, which had belonged to animals of the bovidae, cervidae, and equidae groups, were got out with considerable difficulty, but the bones in the conglomerate were too touch broken up to be identified.
The ulna is complete and much larger than in any of the Equidae, while it is more slender than in most of the true Palaeotheria; it is fixedly united, but not ankylosed, with the radius. There are three toes in the fore limb, the outer ones being slender, but less attenuated than in the Equidae.
M. Gaudry has arranged the species of Hyaenidae, Proboscidea, Rhinocerotidae, and Equidae in their order of filiation from their earliest appearance in the Miocene epoch to the present time, and Professor Rütimeyer has drawn up similar schemes for the Oxen and other Ungulata with what, I am disposed to think, is a fair and probable approximation to the order of nature.
But as throughout the whole group of the Equidae the sexes are identical in colour, we have here no evidence of sexual selection. Nevertheless he who attributes the white and dark vertical stripes on the flanks of various antelopes to this process, will probably extend the same view to the Royal Tiger and beautiful Zebra.
On the one hand, we have extraordinary and very conspicuous peculiarities in the male, entirely absent in the female, such as the antlers of stags, and the vivid plumage of the gold pheasant; on the other we have the sexes externally alike and only distinguished by their sexual organs, as in mouse, rabbit, hare, and many other Rodents, most Equidae, kingfisher, crows and rooks, many parrots, many Reptiles, Amphibia, Fishes, and invertebrate animals.
In short, I use "horses" as the equivalent of the technical name Equidae, which is applied to the whole group of existing equine animals. The horse is in many ways a remarkable animal; not least so in the fact that it presents us with an example of one of the most perfect pieces of machinery in the living world.
The principal metacarpal and metatarsal bones are flatter than they are in any of the Equidae; and the metacarpal bones are longer than the metatarsals, as in the Palaeotheria. In its general form, Plagiolophus resembles a very small and slender horse , and is totally unlike the reluctant, pig-like creature depicted in Cuvier's restoration of his Palaeotherium minus in the "Os semens Fossils."
The femur is more like that of the Palaeotheria than that of the horse, and has only a small depression above its outer condyle in the place of the great fossa which is so obvious in the Equidae. The fibula is distinct, but very slender, and its distal end is ankylosed with the tibia. There are three toes on the hind foot having similar proportions to those on the fore foot.
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