DOMESTICATED HORSE, ASSES, AND MULES.
BY W. P. PYCRAFT, A.L.S., F.Z.S.
The Domesticated Horse.
Like the wild camels, genuine wild horses are very generally believed to be extinct. The vast herds which occur to-day in a wild state in Europe, America, and Australia are to be regarded, say those who believe in the extinction theory, as descended from domesticated animals which have run wild. So far as the American and Australian horses are concerned, this is no doubt true; but of the European stocks it is by no means so certain. For Dr. Nehring—and he speaks with authority—assures us that the wild horses known as Tarpans, which occur on the steppes north of the Sea of Azoff, between the river Dnieper and the Caspian, are veritable wild horses, the last remaining members of enormous herds which occurred in Europe before the dawn of civilisation. These horses formed no small part of the food of the savage races of men then inhabiting this continent. This we know because of the quantities of their remains found in the caves of the south of France, for instance, associated with the remains of the men who hunted them. Further evidence of this we have in the shape of crude engravings on pieces of bone and deer horns, carved by the more artistic spirits amongst these early hunters. From these drawings we gather that the horse they hunted was small in size and heavy in build, with a large head and rough, shaggy mane and tail—a horse, in fact, almost identical with the above-mentioned tarpan. But long before historic records begin these horses must have been domesticated; man discovered that they could be even more useful alive than dead, and from that time forth the horse became his inseparable companion. "Cæsar found the Ancient Britons and Germans using war-chariots drawn by horses."
But the stock of domestic horses drawn from this tarpan breed appears to have died out almost entirely, the majority of horses now existing being probably descendants of the native wild horses of Asia, the product of a still earlier domestication. In Egypt the horse, as a domestic animal, seems to have been preceded by the ass; but about 1900 B.C. it begins to appear in the rôle of a war-horse, to draw chariots. Its use, indeed, until the Middle Ages was almost universally as a war-horse.
From the time of its domestication till to-day the history of the horse has been one of progress. The care and forethought of the breeder have produced many varieties, resulting in such extremes as the London Dray-horse, the Racer, and the Shetland Pony.
Photo by T. Fall] [Baker Street.
YEARLING ARAB COLTS.