792 



HORSE 



almost symmetrical, and there is no gall-bladder. 

 The heart is rather longer ; the aorta gives off 

 almost immediately a large trunk (the so-called 

 'anterior aorta'), which subsequently divides into 

 the two axillary and two carotid arteries. The 

 anterior apertures of the nostrils are large, and can 

 be dilated by special muscles ; immediately within 

 the opening on the upper and outer side is a 

 blind pouch ( ' false nostril ' ) 2 or 3 inches in depth 

 and of unknown function ; in the ass it is even 

 larger. There are also air-sacs in the hinder and 

 upper part of the pharynx which spring from the 

 Eustachian tubes. The time of pairing falls be- 

 tween the end of March and beginning of June. 

 The period of gestation is eleven months, and only 

 one foal is born at once. The mare is capable of 

 breeding at three years old, but the stallion is not 

 usually allowed to pair until four years of age. The 

 average age of a horse may be put down at twenty 

 years ; the greatest age on record is believed to be 

 sixty-two. 



The senses of the horse are acute, though many 

 animals excel it in this respect ; but its faculties 

 of observation and memory are both very highly 

 developed. A place once visited or a road once 

 traversed seems never to be forgotten, and many 

 are the cases in which men have owed life and 

 safety to these faculties in their beasts of burden. 

 Even when untrained it is very intelligent : horses 

 left out in winter will scrape away the snow to get 

 at the vegetation beneath it, which cattle are never 

 observed to do. Perhaps this may be inherited 

 from their ancestors in the Siberian plains ; but 

 curiously enough the very same habit is observed 

 in the horses of the Falkland Islands, whose 

 ancestors in La Plata could have had no occasion 

 to show the same instinct for many generations 

 back. 



With patience and kind treatment the horse can 

 be trained to go through quite complicated feats of 

 memory and perception. That it possesses also an 

 accurate sense of time is clear from the facility 

 with which it can be taught to walk, trot, and 

 dance to music, or take part in concerted evolu- 

 tions. Its knowledge of tunes is evinced by its 

 comprehension of military signals. It is very 

 timid and cautious and suspicious of every new 

 sight or sound ; while in respect of moral qualities 

 it is scarcely too much to say that horses are as 

 diverse as men. 



The history of the horse can be traced back, 

 though with extensive gaps, to the beginning of 

 the Tertiary geological period, where we find the 

 remains of a small ungulate no larger than a fox, to 

 which the appropriate name Eohippus has been 

 given. It was of very generalised structure, having 

 for example four complete toes and a rudimentary 

 fifth on the fore-feet. In Miocene times it was 

 succeeded by Miohippus and AncMtherium, which 

 in their turn gave place to the Pliocene Hipparion 

 and Pliohippus, each of these showing an increase 

 in size and a closer approach in structure to the 

 modern horses. The history of the feet in par- 

 ticular furnishes one of the best examples of the 

 gradual evolution of a specialised from a more 

 generalised organ (see FOOT). The skull and 

 neck became coincidently more elongated, and the 

 teeth underwent changes which have been already 

 alluded to. 



The etymological synopsis above given shows that 

 the horse was known to the Aryan people before 

 their dispersal. Incised figures of the horse upon 

 bones have been found in cave-deposits referred to 

 the Palaeolithic age, and there is evidence to show 

 that at this period the animal was an object of the 

 chase and a source of food. It was probably small 

 and heavy, with a large head and an upright or 

 hog-mane; and attention has been already called 



to the resemblance which some of the sculptured 

 figures of antiquity bear to the Equvs przhevalskii 

 above described. 



The horse reappears in Neolithic remains in the 

 Swiss lake-dwellings and elsewhere, but here appar- 

 ently still as an object of the chase. The precise 

 date of its domestication is uncertain. On Egyptian 

 monuments no trace of it appears before the expul- 

 sion of the Hyksos or shepherd kings ; and it i 

 generally stated that the animal was previously 

 unknown to the Egyptians, though it can hardly 

 be considered as proved that it was introduced by 

 the Hyksos. 



In Scripture the horse is only referred to in con- 

 nection with warfare ; witness the poetic descrip- 

 tion of the war-horse in the Book of Job. The 

 earliest mention of the animal in Holy Writ occurs 

 in connection with the famine in Egypt, when 

 Joseph gave the people corn in exchange for their 

 horses ; and its use for riding is alluded to in 

 2 Kings, xviii. 23. 



In Homeric times the horse was not used for 

 riding ; indeed, at the battle of Marathon ( 490 

 B.C.) the Persians, but not the Greeks, used cavalrv. 

 After 450 B.C., however, the art was practised in 

 Greece, and a treatise upon it, of somewhat later 

 date, from the pen of Xenophon, still exists. The 

 war-horses of the Britons and the chariots, their 

 wheels armed with scythes, are described by 

 Caesar. Athelstan paid special attention to the 

 breed of English horses, and even imported animals 

 from Spain for its improvement. In this he was 

 followed by other monarchs, as John and Edward 

 III. In the reign of this latter king a law wa 

 passed forbidding the exportation of horses, and a 

 number of Spanish jennets were introduced. Henry 

 VIII. made various enactments for improving 

 the condition of the English horse, particularly 

 relating to the pasturing of entire horses upon 

 commons and open lands, where a good deal of 

 promiscuous and detrimental breeding had taken 

 place. In the reign of Elizabeth it was penal to 

 make over a horse ' to the use of any Scottishman,' 

 a prohibition naturally repealed by her successor, 

 who further signalised himself by bringing over to 

 England the ' Markham Arabian,' believed to 

 have been the first of that breed introduced. He 

 did not prove a. success ; but still the experiment 

 was repeated from time to time, and in W'illiam 

 III. 's reign the ' Byerly Turk,' the first of a cele- 

 brated trio, was brought over to England. At the 

 very beginning of the 18th century came the 

 ' Darley Arabian' (the sire of Flying Childers, 

 1715), and later the ' Godolphin Arabian,' or Barb 

 (1724-53). The first of these was the great-great- 

 grandfather of the celebrated racer ' Eclipse ' ( foaled 

 1764), from whom so many winners of important 

 races have descended. Indeed, it is not too much 

 to say that from one or other of these horses, 

 in most cases from all three, all horses at present 

 on the turf trace their descent in the male line. 

 Since the commencement of the 19th century an 

 accurate record has been kept of the descent of all 

 racehorses, and an attempt has been made to carry 

 the history about a century further back. 



There has been much discussion and speculation 

 as to the kind of animal from which the domestic 

 horse has been derived. Colonel Hamilton Smith 

 siipposed that the modern breeds have descended 

 from about five primitive differently-coloured 

 stocks, but this view finds no supporters nowadays ; 

 rather is it maintained that ' the similarity in the 

 most distinct breeds in their general range of 

 colour, in their dappling, and in the occasional 

 appearance, especially in duns, of leg stripes and of 

 double and triple shoulder-stripes, taken together, 

 indicate the probability of the descent of all the 

 existing races from a single, dun-coloured, more or 



