CHAPTER II. 



ORIGINAL HABITAT OF THE HORSE. 



No indications that the horse was originally wild The steppes of High Asia 

 and Arabia not tenable as his original home Color not sufficient evidence 

 Impossibility of horses existing in Arabia in a wild state No horses in 

 Arabia until 356 A.D. Large forces of Armenian, Median, and Cappadocian 

 cavalry employed more than one thousand seven hundred years B.C. A 

 breed of white race horses Special adaptability of the Armenian country 

 to the horse Armenia a horse-exporting country before the Prophet 

 Ezekiel Devotion of the Armenian people to agricultural and pastoral 

 pursuits through a period of four thousand years All the evidences point 

 to ancient Armenia as the center from which the horse was distributed. 



IN" undertaking to consider and determine what particular por- 

 tion of the earth was the original habitat of the horse, we must 

 not forget that we are in a field that antedates all history, both 

 sacred and profane. When we have gone back to the very first 

 dawnings of historical records we are still far short of the period 

 in which initial light can be reached. In profane history, with 

 more or less safety, we can get back to a point about seventeen 

 hundred years before the Christian era; and in sacred history 

 about two hundred years less. At both of these dates the horses 

 referred to were not in a feral state, but were the companions 

 and servants of man. 



There have been two separate theories advanced which demand 

 some attention, because of the eminence and learning of the men 

 who have advanced them. The first is that the original habitat 

 of the horse was on the steppes of High Asia, east and north of 

 the Caspian and the Black Sea. The only argument I have ever 

 seen advanced in support of this theory is based upon the great 

 number of wild horses that are found in that part of the world, 

 and that so many of them are of a dun color. From the fre- 

 quency of the recurrence of the dun color another theory has 

 sprung up to the effect that the original color of the horse was; 



