THE WILD HORSE. i53 



because he had surrendered his opinion to the com- 

 monly received assertion that there were none in 

 Spain. * We might extend the list to the regions 

 of the elk, the bison, the lion, and others, but the 

 foregoing are sufficient to prove that the extinction 

 even of large wild animals is not so rapid as is 

 often believed, — ^nor founded in fact, although it is 

 asserted. 



Now, with regard to wild horses, in the relations 

 of the ancients and in the travels of modern writers, 

 though we have reason occasionally to suspect they 

 mistake the onager and the hemionus for real horses, 

 their still remains sufficient authority for their pre- 

 sence in a state of nature, under one or other of 

 their primasval forms, as far as the south and west 

 of Europe, and in their characteristics assuming the 

 same preference for opposite habitations in plains or 

 in woody mountains, which we now perceive to be 

 a leading distinction of the zebra and the Dauw ; 

 traits of character the more important, as they indi- 

 cate a different mode of living, a choice of plants, 

 not alike in both, — a dissimilar temperament ; and 

 when coupled with different proportions and posi- 

 tion of the ears, an arched or plane forehead, a 

 straight or curved nose, a difference of colour in the 

 eyes, of the skin, of the hoofs, the constancy of their 



* We were shown the specimen with the foregoing account 

 by Professor Lichtenstein, and when we asserted that it was a 

 female ibex, he wondered at his own inattention, and remarked 

 that his judgment had been perverted by his credulity: ad- 

 mitting at once the truth of our declaration. 



