450 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



the periods which produced the fossil horse have escaped the 

 fate of its contemporaries, the mammoth or mastodon, and we are 

 left to surmise only as to how and where the horse of to-day 

 originated, unless we accept the solution offered in Mosaic his- 

 tory. The preservation of the species by means of the ark is 

 corroborated by circumstances attending the propagation and dis- 

 semination of the horse of ancient and modern times. 



That the plains of Southern Africa are more likely to have 

 been the original habitat of the genus Equus can not justly be 

 inferred from the better adaptation of the soil and climate of 

 that region to the existence of the horse, since the rapid spread 

 and successful, healthful growth of the animal in the wild state 

 on the plateaus of the Western continent, show the perfect adap- 

 tation of soil and climate and produce in the Western home to 

 the wants of the species. From the few horses which escaped 

 from the discoverers of America have, in a short period, sprung 

 as by magic, such vast numbers of powerful and hardy animals, 

 that the wants of their nature are as fully met as on the plains 

 of Africa. It is a question, then, of time, of beginning, or ap- 

 pearance of individual specimens of the species on the plains 

 of Africa and America, and not of unfitness of the West as an 

 original habitat. 



The history of the horse in Africa goes not farther back 

 than the Flood of Genesis. Assuming what seems most prob- 

 able, in the light of Scriptural history and absence of any 

 clearly arranged chain of scientific records to the contrary, that 

 the horses of ancient and modern times have proceeded from 

 the individuals that escaped destruction in the great Flood, there 

 are good reasons for belief that the plains of the Eastern conti- 

 nent have been dotted and grazed by the descendants of the 

 specimens which escaped on Ararat. Until a more rational and 

 scientific explanation of the origin of the horse appears, we are 

 compelled to conclude that the horses of the Eastern and West- 

 ern Hemispheres have descended from the remnant remaining 

 somewhere on the Eastern Hemisphere. 



In speaking of the history of the horse, Colonel Hamilton 

 Smith, in Vol. XII of the Naturalist's Library, says : "We know 



