78 THE HORSE AND ITS RELATIVES 



Europe vast steppe-like tracts, which supplied 

 suitable nutriment to the wild horses, and afforded 

 abundant space for their wanderings. . . . 



"Even during the Middle Ages wild horses 

 may well have existed in Germany ; it is true that 

 the objection has been made that the wild horse 

 is a steppe-dwelling animal, and that in the Middle 

 Ages there were no steppes in Germany. But 

 this objection, in my opinion, is invalid. For 

 admitting that the wild horse was originally a 

 steppe-dwelling animal, it is by no means im- 

 probable that during the post-glacial epoch, when 

 the steppes were becoming constricted and the 

 country overgrown with dense forest, small, or 

 even large, herds of wild horses survived in 

 many districts." 



These, it is added, may perfectly well have 

 lived in the open tracts between the forest to a 

 much later date without ever becoming forest 

 animals ; although, as mentioned later, some may 

 have become adapted to a forest life. Much the 

 same view as to the nature of these horses was 

 taken at an earlier date by Colonel Hamilton 

 Smith, ^ who regarded them as the ancestors of the 

 modern eel-backed duns — that is to say, duns with 

 a dark spinal stripe. In the Middle Ages they had, 

 however, probably become more or less crossed 

 with escaped domestic horses, as will be shown to 



^ Naturalist s Library, vol. xx. Horses, p. 1 59. 



