THE MULTIPLE ORIGIN OF HORSES AND PONTES. 451 



squirrel, the badger, i)iiie niartin, and wild boar, the stag, roedeer, 

 iiriis, horse, and other recognized nieinl)ers of a true forest fauna. 



In the case of the P^quiche it is often extremely difficull to determine 

 to -which species any given bones belong, and hence it is impossible to 

 state definitely that the horses found along with the hamsters and 

 other steppe forms essentially differed from those which were con- 

 temporaries of the stag and wild boar and other typical forest forms. 



It may. however, be assumed that even in post-(}lacial times the 

 majority of the inhabitants of the steppes would when nuiture be 

 quite or nearly Avhole colored, while frequenters of the forests would 

 as often be either striped or spotted; that, e. g.. the horse which fre- 

 quented the Rhine valley along with the kiang and woolly rhinoceros 

 would resemble the wild horse {E. c. prjeralskli) which, with the 

 kiang, now lives in the vicinity of the Great Altai Mountains, while 

 the horse which at a subsequent period was a contemporary of the 

 wild l)oar, stag, and roedeer would be more or less richly striped, and 

 in its limbs and general conformation adapted for a life in or near 

 forests. 



That there is some ground for this assumption will, I think, be 

 admitted Avhen due consideration is given to results obtained by cross- 

 ing various kinds of horses Avith a Burchell zebra. Allien ponies of 

 the Celtic type — i. e., ponies Avhich in their color are identical with 

 Prjevalsky's horse, almost certainly the lineal descendant of the 

 steppe horse of Paheolithic times — are crossed with a male Burchell 

 zebra, hybrids are obtained which, while in build strongly suggesting 

 a Burchell zebra, are as profusely striped as the great zebra of Soma- 

 liland, and have at least five times as many transverse stripes across 

 the trunk as occur in their zebra sire. When, however, i^ony mares of 

 the Norwegian tyi)e are crossed with a Burchell zebra the li3^brids 

 resemble in make their Norse dams, and in tlieir markings closely 

 approximate the common or mountain zebra. The explanation of 

 these remarkable differences seems to be that in the case of the Celtic 

 pony hybrids the remote (Grevy like) ancestors of the Burchell zebra 

 control the development and determine the plan of the decoration, 

 while in the case of the Norse pony hybiids the remote stri{)ed -horse 

 ancestors contribute the more obvious characters — the Norse ponies 

 having more influence in determining the plan of striping than the 

 highly specialized Celtic ponies, from which stripes had probably all 

 but completely disappeared countless generations !)efore they began 

 to fade on the horses which belonged to the forest fauna. 



It is j^robable that iho. highly specialized Celtic pony, as well as 

 the primitive (iobi wild horse, belong to the steppe fauna, and it is 

 equally probable (hat the yellow-dun (Fjord) hoi-se, in which a 

 striped coat may be said to be latent, belongs to the forest fauna. If 

 this be admitted, it follows that the environment of the Norse race has 



