since the earliest known records.[[108]] Even in so fleeting a character as colour, Hofacker[[109]] found that, out of two hundred and sixteen cases in which horses of the same colour were paired, only eleven pairs produced foals of a quite different colour. As Professor Low[[110]] has remarked, the English race-horse offers the best possible evidence of inheritance. The pedigree of a race-horse is of more value in judging of its probable success than its appearance: "King Herod" gained in prizes 201,505l. sterling, and begot 497 winners; "Eclipse" begot 334 winners.
Whether the whole amount of difference between the various breeds be due to variation is doubtful. From the fertility of the most distinct breeds[[111]] when crossed, naturalists have generally looked at all the breeds as having descended from a single species. Few will agree with Colonel H. Smith, who believes that they have descended from no less than five primitive and differently coloured stocks.[[112]] But as several species and varieties of the horse existed[[113]] during the later tertiary periods, and as Rütimeyer found differences in the size and form of the skull in the earliest known domesticated horses,[[114]] we ought not to feel sure that all our breeds have descended from a single species. As we see that the savages of North and South America easily reclaim the feral horses, there is no improbability in savages in various quarters of the world having domesticated more than one native species or natural race. No aboriginal or truly wild horse is positively known now to exist; for it is thought by some authors that the wild horses of the East are escaped domestic animals.[[115]] If our domestic breeds have descended from several
species or natural races, these apparently have all become extinct in the wild state. With our present knowledge, the common view that all have descended from a single species is, perhaps, the most probable.
With respect to the causes of the modifications which horses have undergone, the conditions of life seem to produce a considerable direct effect. Mr. D. Forbes, who has had excellent opportunities of comparing the horses of Spain with those of South America, informs me that the horses of Chile, which have lived under nearly the same conditions as their progenitors in Andalusia, remain unaltered, whilst the Pampas horses and the Puno ponies are considerably modified. There can be no doubt that horses become greatly reduced in size and altered in appearance by living on mountains and islands; and this apparently is due to want of nutritious or varied food. Every one knows how small and rugged the ponies are on the Northern islands and on the mountains of Europe. Corsica and Sardinia have their native ponies; and there were,[[116]] or still are, on some islands on the coast of Virginia, ponies like those of the Shetland Islands, which are believed to have originated through exposure to unfavourable conditions. The Puno ponies, which inhabit the lofty regions of the Cordillera, are, as I hear from Mr. D. Forbes, strange little creatures, very unlike their Spanish progenitors. Further south, in the Falkland Islands, the offspring of the horses imported in 1764 have already so much deteriorated in size[[117]] and strength that they are unfitted for catching wild cattle with the lasso; so that fresh horses have to be brought for this purpose from La Plata at a great expense. The reduced size of the horses bred on both southern and northern islands, and on several mountain-chains, can hardly have been caused by the cold, as a similar reduction has occurred on the Virginian and Mediterranean islands. The horse can withstand intense cold, for wild troops live on the plains of Siberia under lat. 56°,[[118]] and aboriginally the horse must
have inhabited countries annually covered with snow, for he long retains the instinct of scraping it away to get at the herbage beneath. The wild tarpans in the East have this instinct; and, as I am informed by Admiral Sulivan, this is likewise the case with the horses which have run wild on the Falkland Islands; now this is the more remarkable as the progenitors of these horses could not have followed this instinct during many generations in La Plata: the wild cattle of the Falklands never scrape away the snow, and perish when the ground is long covered. In the northern parts of America the horses, descended from those introduced by the Spanish conquerors of Mexico, have the same habit, as have the native bisons, but not so the cattle introduced from Europe.[[119]]
The horse can flourish under intense heat as well as under intense cold, for he is known to come to the highest perfection, though not attaining a large size, in Arabia and northern Africa. Much humidity is apparently more injurious to the horse than heat or cold. In the Falkland Islands, horses suffer much from the dampness; and this same circumstance may perhaps partly account for the singular fact that to the eastward of the Bay of Bengal,[[120]] over an enormous and humid area, in Ava, Pegu, Siam, the Malayan archipelago, the Loo Choo Islands, and a large part of China, no full-sized horse is found. When we advance as far eastward as Japan, the horse reacquires his full size.[[121]]
With most of our domesticated animals, some breeds are kept on account of their curiosity or beauty; but the horse is valued almost solely for its utility. Hence semi-monstrous breeds are not preserved; and probably all the existing breeds have been slowly formed either by the direct action of the conditions of life, or through the selection of individual differences. No doubt semi-monstrous breeds might have been formed: thus Mr. Waterton records[[122]] the case of a mare which produced
successively three foals without tails; so that a tailless race might have been formed like the tailless races of dogs and cats. A Russian breed of horses is said to have frizzled hair, and Azara[[123]] relates that in Paraguay horses are occasionally born, but are generally destroyed, with hair like that on the head of a negro; and this peculiarity is transmitted even to half-breeds: it is a curious case of correlation that such horses have short manes and tails, and their hoofs are of a peculiar shape like those of a mule.
It is scarcely possible to doubt that the long-continued selection of qualities serviceable to man has been the chief agent in the formation of the several breeds of the horse. Look at a dray-horse, and see how well adapted he is to draw heavy weights, and how unlike in appearance to any allied wild animal. The English race-horse is known to have proceeded from the commingled blood of Arabs, Turks, and Barbs; but selection and training have together made him a very different animal from his parent-stocks. As a writer in India, who evidently knows the pure Arab well, asks, who now, "looking at our present breed of race-horses, could have conceived that they were the result of the union of the Arab horse and African mare?" The improvement is so marked that in running for the Goodwood Cup "the first descendants of Arabian, Turkish, and Persian horses, are allowed a discount of 18 lbs. weight; and when both parents are of these countries a discount of 36 lbs."[[124]] It is notorious that the Arabs have long been as careful about the pedigree of their horses as we are, and this implies great and continued care in breeding. Seeing what has been done in England by careful breeding, can we doubt that the Arabs must likewise have produced during the course of centuries a marked effect on the qualities of their horses? But we may go much farther back in time, for in the most ancient known book, the Bible, we hear of studs carefully kept for breeding,
and of horses imported at high prices from various countries.[[125]] We may therefore conclude that, whether or not the various existing breeds of the horse have proceeded from one or more aboriginal stocks, yet that a great amount of change has resulted from the direct action of the conditions of life, and probably a still greater amount from the long-continued selection by man of slight individual differences.