392 THE HORSE 



region of young foals, and produces ulcers, which invariably 

 cause death unless human aid is interposed." 



There are two monumental works on equine history 

 worthy of special notice, one French, and the other 

 English The Prehistoric and Historic Horse, by Pitrement, 

 1883, and, The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred 

 Horse, by Professor Ridgway of Cambridge, the distinguished 

 archaeologist, 1905. Pi^trement maintains that the home of 

 " the wild horse of the Old World was confined to Northern 

 Europe and to those regions of upper Asia which lie north of 

 the Caucasus and of the mountain range joining the Caspian 

 Sea with the Himalayas." The plain-dwelling Asiatic horse 

 he divided into two distinct breeds, the Mongolian, with 

 convex forehead and low-set tail, to the east, and the Aryan 

 " with the straight or upturned profile and tail set on high," 

 to the west of the Altai Mountains. These horses are 

 supposed to have accompanied the primitive Mongols and 

 Aryans in their separate migrations the Mongol type 

 ultimately going with the Phoenicians to the African coast 

 of the Mediterranean, and the Aryan type to ancient Greece, 

 and to become the Arabian Kehailan of the present day. 

 The fact that all horses scrape with their fore feet when snow 

 covers their food, supports Pi6trement's theory that the 

 ancestors of all the varieties of the horse of to-day came from 

 the far North. Horned cattle do not possess this instinctive 

 characteristic, and are consequently believed to have origin- 

 ated in a snowless region. 



Ridgway adopts the following Classification of the 

 Genus Equus : (i) Equus caballus, the horse; (2) E. 

 celticus, the Celtic pony, named by Cossar Ewart ; (3) E. 

 przewalskii, Prejevalski's horse; (4) E. kiang, the kiang ; (5) 

 E. onager, the Indo-Persian wild ass; (6) E. hemippus, the Syrian 

 wild ass ; (7) E. asinus, the African wild ass ; (8) E. somalicus, 

 the Somali wild ass ; (9) E. grevyi, GreVy's Imperial or Somali 

 Zebra ; (10) E. zebra, the mountain zebra ; (i i) E. crawshayi ; 

 (12) E.foai; (13) E. granti, Grant's zebra ; (14) E. chapmani, 

 Chapman's zebra ; (15) E. burchelli, Burchell's zebra; (16) E. 

 quagga, the quagga, which is supposed to be extinct. 



Darwin held the belief that all forms of horses that breed 

 freely together and produce fertile progeny are descended 

 from a common stock, no matter what the colour, the size, or the 



