THE THREE PASTURES. The Bay pasture and the Dun pasture are each of continental size, whereas the green pasture is only a small province. In the same way, the rock formations of the Bay and the Dun pastures are each continuous for several thousands of miles. In sharp contrast is that little ragged edge of a great continent known as North-western Europe, a district which has many times been flooded by the sea, each bath making new beds of rock.
The lowlands of Great Britain, for example, have been frequently submerged, and the island shows samples of almost every rock formation known upon the earth. This European pasture then is not only small, but also varied in its rock formations, its soils, and its landscape. One may get a standard horse of registered size in the Bay range or the Dun range, but would expect to find on the green range of Europe not only many colours, but also many types derived from the primitive stock, strains of all sorts and sizes. A glance at three formations will show how much the build and size of a horse is varied by the rocks.
GRANITE. In North-western Europe the granitic or speckled formations form upstanding moorlands. The poor but abundant grass maintains ponies both light and heavy of build, derived from several kinds of ancestors. They are so secured from attack by beasts of prey that they do not need to run far and fast on ground where running would be dangerous. These are grouped under the general name of Celtic pony.
Limestone and clay
LIMESTONE. Allowing for some districts, like the central plain of Ireland, where the Ice-sheet has left the country very badly drained, a limestone formation usually makes dry soil. The vegetable mould may hold a little water and make mud, as on the chalk downs, but the rock is so porous that most of the rain soaks down, and the waters run mainly underground. Moreover, the vegetable mould gives chemical qualities to this water, which is enabled to dissolve the rocks and form caverns on the underground water courses. At the same time the water becomes 'hard' with lime in solution, so that the springs will petrify moss and twigs.
The dryness of the ground tends to make horses sound of bone. The carbonate of lime in the water supplies them with the material for bone. As the result the bones are very light in proportion to their strength. So this pasture registers a well-built and very light horse. If such an animal is of Bay blood, he is larger and swifter than the Arab, lacking only in soundness and in travel endurance.
CLAY. As clay holds water, its soils provide abundance to the grass roots, and so produce thick turf with a great weight of green forage to the acre. Such heavy feeding without any exercise in search of water, would, after the killing out of the wolves, tend to produce a large, heavy, slow-going gentle horse with steady nerves such as our draught stock, lacking in that soundness of feet and legs which is limited to the breeds of arid regions.
Horses of Cloudland
So far, the argument presents for the green pastures of cloudland horses of several colours; and, for the varied rock formations in the North Sea and Baltic basins, horses of many types.
Forest varieties