266 BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



horse is supposed to have lived in South America) the tendency of 

 domestication has been towards increase. All the writers, with 

 charming indefiniteness, speak of the wild horses as "small, strong 

 and not fast. " 



We have rather more accurate information as to their powers of 

 endurance, which are undoubtedly considerable ; it is not uncommon 

 for an animal to be captured, ridden sixty or seventy miles straight 

 off, and then the animal, tired, not "done up," to be enlarged; this 

 work on grass feed is not bad. In some of the revolutions in South 

 America these wild horses have been used extensively and in rather 

 extraordinary ways. Thus Paez, the cavalry leader of Bolivar, broke 

 in wild horses and so mounted a very considerable force, with which 

 on one occasion he performed the extraordinary feat of capturing 

 gunboats in midstream, the men swam their horses in and jumped 

 on board from off the animals' backs. The aquatic powers of horses 

 in this part of the world are remarkable, and it is peculiar that 

 white horses are there thought most of as being: the best swimmers. 



It is really wonderful how horses can adapt themseloes to emer- 

 gencies. Those of Central Asia, for example, have often to live like 

 reindeer, eating snow for drink and gathering a scanty feed by 

 scraping away the snow. Darwin tells us what a hard time of it 

 horses sometimes have in South America. Cattle and hoises in time 

 of drought become so exhausted, that when they rush into rivers 

 they are unable to crawl up the muddy banks, and thus are drowned. 

 Ci All the small rivers become highly saline, and this caused the 

 death of vast numbers in particular spots ; for when an animal 

 drinks of such water it does not recover. Azara describes the fury 

 of the wild horses on a similar occasion, rushing to the marshes, 

 those which arrived first being overwhelmed and crushed by those 

 which followed. He adds that more than once he has seen the 

 carcases of upwards of a thousand wild horses thus destroyed." 

 The distinguished naturalist comes to the conclusion that a geologist 

 unacquainted with the occasional occurrence of this phenomenon 

 would draw some conclusions of not altogether satisfactory stability 

 from discovery of a breccia of horse bones. 



Yet, in spite of adverse influences, rapidity of spread of horses is a 

 phenomenon of which there can be no doubt. The diffusion of horses 

 which in Mexico escaped into the woods and savannahs northward 

 to the Rocky Mountains and to the sources of the Columbia, is, as 

 Low points out, remarkable, yet not to be compared with what has 



