THE HOESE : A ZOOLOGICAL STUDY. 199 



Ercolani in Italy, and Marsh and Cope in America. The results 

 obtained by these observers and philosophical investigators of the 

 past and of the present constitute a mass of knowledge which, if 

 it has not yet thoroughly settled down into a well-defined stratum 

 of scientific information, promises to consolidate into a concrete and 

 instructive mass of science under the term hippology. 



But there is a more practical branch of this science of the future 

 (if I be permitted to call it so) which appeals to a much larger class 

 than scientists pure and simple. In all parts of the world the horse- 

 supply question is becoming a very large one, and presenting pro- 

 blems which require to be solved by those who have made the study 

 of it a special science. The influences of artificial selection and 

 natural causes on the form and utility of the horse is a phenomenon 

 which we all have constantly under our eyes in Bombay, where the 

 Arab, an Oriental horse, meets his Occidental cousin from England 

 or Austi*alia, and where indigenous horses (Country-breds), Turco- 

 mans, Persians, and even Burmans, are constantly to be seen and 

 compared as to shape, value for work, and suitability for the 

 climate. 



One of the most remarkable phenomena of the last fifty years is 

 the changes which have taken place in the distribution and nature 

 of horses during that time. In England the thorough-bred is 

 constantly undergoing change (in some respects not for the better), 

 the weight-carrying hunter is becoming replaced by much lighter 

 horses, and the older race of horsemen regret the degeneracy of 

 horses in the present day ; we still constantly hear of the falling 

 off in horse-breeding throughout England and Ireland, and often of 

 extinction of useful breeds, such as the Suffolk Punch, and yet we 

 find our troops and batteries well horsed, our race horses well to 

 the front as usual, our thorough-breds bought for high prices, 

 because foreigners can produce none like them, and our horses 

 " stay " in the field as well as ever, in spite of the pace in hunting 

 having decidedly become faster of late years. Excluding the feeble 

 attempts of the French and others to imitate the British Turf, the 

 efforts of the Continental nations are directed almost entirely to the 

 adaptation of the horse to war purposes. The colossal studs of Ger- 

 many, Italy, France, Austria, and Russia constitute a drain on the 

 resources of those countries which, like the conscription, has happily 

 not yet extended to England, and from which India, with no slight 

 effort, set herself free. On the southern and eastern outskirts of 

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