HOROSCOPE

signs of the heavens at person’s birth; in ‘casting’ the h. astrologers made diagram of 12 houses, or zodiac signs. See Asrronocy. Eng. astronomer; first to show how moon follows Kepler’s laws, and to account for its irregularities; revised Kep- 'Yer’s Rudo!phine tables; predicted and firsh observed transit of Venus; first to make tidal observations. ' HORSE FAMILY (Equidae); the most highly specialised family of odd-toed, hoofed (Ungulate) mammals, including hhorses, a es, and zebras as well as many extinct forms. The compact, clean-cut bodies long heads and _ tails, and maned necks of the horse and its relatives are familiar, but there are skeletal characters of more importance in separating it from its near nest allies, the ‘Tapirs and MRhinoceroses, and these mainly reside in the teeth and limbs. The skull is very long, the eye-socket is a closed ring, and the teeth number, at highest, 44, although the early disap- “sale of the first cheek-tooth on each ‘leaves 42 as the usual number. The surfaces of the back teeth, obviously grinders, are thrown into complicated crescentic folds of hard enamel, with softer _ Cement between; and the incisors are - prominent and chisel-shaped, with a central pit lined by enamel—the ‘mark’ whose decrease in size indicates the age of its po e or. ‘The limbs are furnished with one hoofed digit (the third), which is functional, but it is sometimes accom- ‘panied by the second and fourth, reduced to mere splint bones, or at any rate __ Horses in a general sense are found throughout the world, but the various wild species are confined in range and are found only in the Old World, especialJy in Asia and Eastern Africa. Semiwild forms occur in Australia and Amerfica, but these are the descendants of domesticated horses which have escaped from captivity. in the latter country ‘since the Spanish conquest. In nature horses are gregarious, living, in herds the movements of which are dominated ‘by an experienced stallion or male, the female being known as mare, and the young as foal; but they are ever on the watch and habitually move against the wind so that they may receive early notice of the scent of an enemy. They are entirely vegetarian, feeding mainly on gra , but also on young shoots of trees and herbage. To consider le generally the members of the horse family, all the living species of which belong to the noe genus Hquus. Heading the list on account of its familiarity and of its usefulne to man is the domestic Horse (HZ. cab all us), representatives of which roamed the plains of Hurope and Asia in freedom till about the end of the XVI. cent., although the horse as a domestic animal probably dates from prehistoric times. It is characterised by a hardened lump—the ‘chestnut ‘«—on the inner side of the legs above the hock, and by the fact that the hairs of the tail grow in a ta el from its base, During the ages of servitude to man many varieties of horses have been selected and bred for special purposes, Thus perhaps most useful are the heavy carthorses, distinguished by their weight of body and stoutne of limb, the best known being the Shire, Clydesdale, and Suffolk Punch. While bred for very special purposes nece itating cleanne and lightne of limb and body are the English Racers and American Trotters, differing im descent from the cart-horses, which are comparatively pure natives of Europe, by the interbreeding with such graceful African horses as the Arab. Closely related to the domestic horse are the active Tarpans or Wild Horses of of the steppes, probably a decaying remnant of the original wild horses of Europe; and the small, shaggy, erect sates Prejevalski’s Horse of Central sia. The horse; as we know it, has been traced back to Pliocene times, but the remains of earlier forms have been discovered. which seem to point to the ancestral line along which the modern horse developed. The differentiation appears to have followed these directions; an increase in size, a reduction in the number of functional digits, and an increasing complexity in the structure of the teeth. Thus the Eocene Phenacodus, at the source of the horse group, was an animal about the size of a bull-dog and had five functional toes on each foot; Palocotherium and Anchitherium, the former from the later Eocene, the latter about the size of a sheep, had three digits, and link the tapir group to the horses, while in the Pliocene Hippotherium, as big as a donkey, the middle digit was already outstandingly developed.