106 INTRODUCTION. 



colours and cliaracters recorded of the primitive 

 breeds, to create a belief that the nations who first 

 subdued their horses derived each their own race 

 from the wild stock in their vicinity, and therefore 

 that varieties at least in colour occupied diflferent 

 regions ; such as the pied in the central mountains 

 of Middle Asia, the dark bay southwards of the 

 banks of the Jyhoun or Jaxartes, the dun more 

 westward — as far as the Caspian, the white on the 

 north shore of the Euxine, and the sooty and black 

 in Europe. We shall find among these, races al- 

 ways clouded of two colours, others constantly 

 marked with a black streak along the spine, often 

 cross -barred on the joints, with dark or black extre- 

 mities; and again, another, where circular spots, 

 commonly clearer than the ground colour, occur, — 

 whether they be bay, blackish ashy, or grey : the 

 durability of these distinctions, not obliterated even 

 in our time, during more than three thousand years 

 of perpetual crossings of breeds, affords another 

 and a strong argument in favour of an aboriginal 

 difference of species in the single form of the do- 

 mestic horse. 



BREEDS OF HORSES NOTICED BY THE ANCIENTS. 



From what has been said of the apparent distri- 

 bution of the primeval forms of Equus Cahallus^ we 

 may consider the variety first known to the nations 

 of liistorical antiquity, was that which from geogra- 

 phical position would be the first to spread among 



