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Accuracy

Improvement Era, vol. 10, no. 4, February 1907, p. 247

Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations

REVELATION ANTE-DATING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 247 Alaska, in Mexico, in Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, as well as in Europe, Asia and Africa. All these horses were much like the living species and most of them are included in the genus Equus. A complete skeleton of one of them (Equus scotti) found by the American Museum expedition of 1899 in Northern Texas, is mounted in the large wall case." [The accompanying reproduction is from this skeleton.] Remains of these fossil horses from various parts of the United States are shown in the counter-case. One very rich locality is on the Niobrara River ia Nebraska, another in central Oregon. Many separate teeth and bones have been-, found in the phosphate mines near Charleston, S. C. ; other specimens have com& from central Florida, from southern Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Louisana and even from. Alaska. They are, in fact, so often found in deposits of rivers and lakes of the latest geological epoch (the Pleistocene) that the formation in the western United States has received the name of Equus Beds. In South America, in the strata of the Pleistocene Epoch, there occurs, be- sides several extinct species of the genus Equus, the Hippidium, a peculiar kind of horse characterized by very short legs and feet, and some peculiarities about the muzzle and grinding teeth. The legs were hardly as long as those of a cow, while the head was as large as that of a racehorse, or other small breed of the domestic horse. All these horses became extinct, both in North and South Anjerica. Why, we do not know. It may have been that they were unable to stand the cold of the winters, probably longer continued and much more severe during the Ice Age than now. It is very probable that man—the early tribes of prehistoric hunters — played a large part in extinguishing the race. The competition with the bison and the antelope, which recently migrated to America—may have made it more difficult than formerly for the American horse to get a living. Or, finally, some unknown disease or prolonged season of drought may have exterminated the race. (Supple- ment to American Museum Journal, W. D. Matthew, Ph. D., January, 1903.) Logan, Uta

h. ACCURACY. A pebble in a tiny stream will turn the course of a river, so the seemingly unimportant habit of inaccuracy has kept many a man from success by changing the current of his life. Accuracy, doing things to a finish, is one of the most important lessons that can be taught a child, because there is a moral quality at stake. The whole character is often undermined by the unfortunate habit of inaccuracy. Men whose ability would have made them peers in their communities have become nonentities, and their careers mediocre or total failures, simply because they were allowed in childhood to form the habit of half doing things, and of making half or exagger- ated statements. — Success.