Horse and Zebra Compared.
If a horse of the hackney type and a zebra were skinned and the bodies of the two animals then examined I suppose a competent anatomist would find some difficulty in distinguishing one from the other so closely do these two allied species of equidæ, one wild and the other domesticated, resemble one another in structure. But in this as in many other questions form is not to be considered alone. The colouration of the two animals is strikingly different, but, in its humble way, the difference of their patterns of hair-arrangement is worthy of notice. The horse in different specimens chosen from a large group will exhibit patterns in the frontal, pectoral and inguinal regions constantly, and variably in less common regions, axillary, cervical and gluteal, that is to say, in six different areas. I have examined many zebras, living and dead, and find no constant pattern in the whole of its large surface of skin except an ill-developed frontal and a very small cervical one—two in all. The mere numerical difference is not the only important one, for the insignificance of the size of the two zebra patterns and the constancy and high development of many of those of the horse are not less significant from the present point of view. I submit that these two animals carry about with them on their hairy coats indubitable records of their personal and ancestral habits. Attention to the facts of a horse’s life and certain related and contrasted facts of the lives of other animals, of which the zebra may be taken as a type, will show the reasons why these patterns are to be looked upon as registers of long-past and present activities of the species concerned. The horse has been developed out of a wild plastic stock with some such ancestors as the wild horse of Przewalski, lately brought to Europe, by a process of selection by man during a thousand generations, first in its Central Asian cradle and later all over the civilized world. It has been as much made by man for his purposes in locomotion as a locomotive engine has been made by him. The one has been produced in accordance with the laws of applied physics and the other by those of biology. His locomotive life has come to pass for the needs of higher, or at any rate more cunning creatures, who have availed themselves of the potentialities provided by Nature. The zebra in its habits differs from the horse in the simple, but fundamental point that the former lives the ordinary active life of a wild animal for its own needs of protection against foes and search for food, the latter has not only this activity of life in its organisation, but has, super-added to it by domestication, all the locomotive life of a beast of burden. The zebra presents few, if any, of those phenomena which I have often termed Animal Pedometers,[50] so characteristic of the hairy coat of the horse I am reverting here again to the region of metaphor for which I offer no excuse, but only a few remarks as to the use and value of that elusive method of illustration. Metaphor is a figure of speech or writing which consists in a transference of thought from one idea to another. It is, therefore, not a simple substitution of synonymous expressions, nor is it merely a simile. It is in hourly use in the speech and writing of common as well as highly educated persons, and adds much to the ease of communication among us of our thoughts upon subjects which rise somewhat above the level of mere statement of obvious facts. So long as metaphors are not abused by being used as arguments to prove some proposition, but only as illustrations of our meaning, we gain greatly by their legitimate use. It is not for nothing the well-drilled Press of Germany in their journals and its histrionic Emperor in his rhetorical outbursts, make extensive use of metaphors. We are everlastingly reading of Germany’s “biological necessity,” her “iron will to victory,” the “steel ring of field-grey heroes who guard her against a world of devils,” of her “brilliant second,” her “granite walls,” her “future on the water,” the “Admiral of the Atlantic,” “grasping the trident,” and so on in nearly every public utterance of her leaders. They know well their audience and employ these harmless, if often ridiculous, expressions with a definite and legitimate purpose, and are well qualified for creating the public opinion of a nation that dearly loves a phrase.
Well, this term, Animal Pedometers, is used here not for proving anything, but for the purpose of impressing on the mind of the reader the fact of certain patterns on the horse’s skin being intimately related to its locomotive life which, I hope I may assume, has been sufficiently demonstrated in this chapter. A pedometer is one of those works of men devised for his physical and mental advancement which are marked by a precision as well as purpose often absent from Nature’s handiwork. Just as a pedestrian, cyclist, or motorist carries with him his pedometer and tells you with some pride the number of miles he has “done” in a day or hour, so the horse displays urbé et orbi his rougher registers of the locomotive triumphs of his ancestors and himself, and these I call Animal Pedometers by way of metaphor, and patterns by way of fact.
The less striking and rarer patterns of the horse’s hair have been fully described elsewhere,[51] and it would serve no useful end to refer to them at length, nor to multiply proofs of the position here maintained.