I 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION: THE ANCESTORS OF THE EQUIDAE. 



Multaque turn interiisse auimantum saecla necessest 

 nee potuisse propagando jirocudere prolem. 

 nam quaecunque vides vesci vitalibus auris, 

 aut dolus, aut virtus, aut denique mobilitas est 

 ex ineunte aevo genus id tutata reservans. 



Lucretius v. 855-9. 



Next to the history of the various branches of the human 

 race there is no more interesting and important subject for 

 man's study than the origin and development of the breeds of 

 domestic horses, the noblest of all the creatures that man has 

 subdued to his will, and the acquisition of which has been, as 

 will be shown presently, one of the chief factors in the rise and 

 supremacy of the great nations of the ancient, medieval, and 

 modern world. It has long been a matter of dispute among 

 naturalists whether all our domestic horses have had a multiple 

 or a single origin. Colonel Hamilton Smith^ held that they are 

 descended from five primitive and differently coloured stirpes — 

 the bay (represented by the tarpan), the white, the black, the 

 dun with a striped back (represented by the horses of the 

 Ukraine), and finally the piebald stock of Tibet. M. Sanson* 

 went further and divided the Equides cahallines of our actual 

 epoch into eight species (especes) which have severally their 



1 "The Horse," Naturalist's Library, Vol. xii. pp. 160 sqq. 



^ M. Sanson first published his subdivisions in his " Nouvelle Determination 

 des Especes Chevalines du genre Equus" (6 Dec. 1869), Comptes-Rendus, lxix. 

 pp. 1204-7; then in Migrations des Animaux Domestiques, p. 9, and in his 

 Traite de Zootechnie (ed. 2), Vol. in. pp. 9 — 105. 



B. H. 1 



