256 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



large herds, very shy, and when frightened continue their flight 

 for days, not returning to the same place for a year or two. Their 

 colour is uniformly bay with black tails and long manes hanging 

 down to the ground. They are never hunted owing to the difficulties 

 of the chase. * * * The plains of Tsaidam are 3,700 feet below 

 Kokondi, and on this account the climate is warmer. The absence 

 of water aslo tends to increase the heat.'' 



Thus we must conclude that the evidence is slightly in favour of 

 the existence of wild horses in Central Asia, but we have no evidence 

 as to his pedigree in relation to domestication. 



The Shetland pony is practically the wild horse of the British 

 Isles, and illustrates on a small scale the peculiarites of horses 

 which have gone wild. He is evidently not the British horse 

 exported by Julius Caesar as " being powerful, and by stature and 

 training well suited to war." 



Tho question now arises as to whether all horses of the present day 

 have come from one original stock or have been tleveloped on parallel 

 lines. Wild horses certainly existed in the distant past, and it 

 behoves us to inquire in what respect they resembled and how 

 they are related to those of the present day and also our domesti- 

 cated horses. The original horse may not now exist in a wild state, 

 but he must be lineally represented by our horses, aud his com- 

 parison with them must result in important observations. The 

 question of origin of the horses of America is soon settled. As 

 Oscar Schmidt shows, the Palasotherium soon disappeared in South 

 America, but became very numerous and continuously developed in 

 North America as in Europe and Asia. Marsh considers that a true 

 equus appeared in the upper Pliocene, and this in the post-tertiarie a 

 roamed over the whole of North and South America, but very soon 

 became extinct. Schmidt concludes that " the true horse of our 

 day never existed in America before its importation." The primi- 

 tive equine forms of America are thus supposed to have been crushed 

 out by the ice formations of the Diluvium. Among the forms thus 

 lost must be included Equus andium (Branco) as found in the 

 volcanic tufa of Ecuador, probably also the coeval diluvial pampas 

 horse, the cave horse of Brazil, and the Equus curvidens (Owen). 

 In Equus andium it has been observed that the eyes must have 

 been situated much deeper than in Equus caballus, in which the 

 orbit, has moved further back. Altogether, concludes Schmidt, the 

 American members of the genus horse have never advanced so closa 



