Note the colts examining the photographer's bag. They are very inquisitive creatures, but easily frightened.
The coloration of our various breeds of horses is generally without any definite marking, piebald and dappled being the nearest approach to a pattern. Occasionally, however, horses are found with a dark stripe along the back, and sometimes with dark stripes on the shoulders and legs. Darwin, discovering a number of horses so marked belonging to different breeds, came to the conclusion that probably all existing races of horses were descended from a "single dun-coloured, more or less striped primitive stock, to which [stock] our horses occasionally revert."
"If we were not so habituated to the sight of the horse," says the late Sir William Flower, "as hardly ever to consider its structure, we should greatly marvel at being told of a mammal so strangely constructed that it had but a single toe on each extremity, on the end of the nail of which it walked or galloped. Such a conformation is without parallel in the vertebrate series." By the aid of fossils we can trace out all the stages through which this wonderful foot has passed in arriving at its present state of perfection: we can see how it has become more and more beautifully adapted to fulfil the requirement demanded—a firm support to enable its owner to cover hard ground at great speed. The study of the structure of this foot, and a comparison with the intermediate forms, make it clear that this toe corresponds to the third finger or toe of the human hand or foot—according as we compare the fore or hind limbs—and that its development was at the expense of the remaining toes, which gradually dwindled and disappeared, leaving in the living one-toed horse only traces of the second and fourth toes in the shape of a pair of splint-bones, one on either side of the excessively developed third toe.
Photo by T. Fall] [Baker Street.
ARAB MARE.
Nothing would induce this horse to stand still in order to be photographed; so as a last resource Lady Anne Blunt put on her Arab costume. This acted like magic, for under its spell the animal at once became quiet.
The horses, it must be remarked, may be distinguished from the asses by the fact that the tail in the former is clothed with long hair throughout; in the latter long hair springs only from the sides and end, forming a tuft. Furthermore, the horses have a remarkable horny excrescence, resembling a huge black and flattened wart, on each hind leg just below the "hock," or heel-joint. This excrescence is commonly known as the "chestnut." Its function is unknown. A similar pair of "chestnuts" occurs on the inner side of the fore limb just above the wrist, or "knee," as it is generally called. The "chestnuts" of the fore limb occur also in the asses, but not those of the hind limb.
Photo by T. Fall] [Baker Street.