154 THE HORSES OF PREHISTORIC [CH. 



some at least of the distinguishing features of various breeds 

 may be ascribed to the mixing of the two stocks, and this may 

 be done with still greater safety when these characteristics 

 are the same as those found in horses which without doubt 

 are the result of crossing the two stocks. We have just seen 

 that in Sumatra the crossing of the old breed of ponies with 

 Arab blood has produced piebalds and skewbalds, and perhaps 

 a black dorsal band. Tibet has long been noted for its richly 

 marked horses (commonly called tangums from the Tangustan 

 mountains of Bhotan), piebald, skewbald, and striped, frequently 

 with white legs and marked with such large clouds of bay that two 

 or three spread over the whole body, head, and neck, the head 

 being generally included in the bay colour, and when it comes 

 down over the shoulder and the thigh that colour deepening into 

 black (Fig. 56) : there is also a proportion of black and white in 

 the mane and tail, and not unfrequently black edging on the 

 ears, whilst the callosities are scarcely pei'ceptible on the hind 

 legs^ From the fact that Father Georgi had seen these horses 

 apparently in a wild state on the northern declivities of the 

 Himalayan range, and that d'Hobsonville had also seen such 

 animals (which he describes as below 10 hands in height, and 

 in their winter dress covered with long hair and marked sym- 

 metrically with spots), and from the fact that another account 

 referred to wild spotted horses about Nipchow in Eastern 

 Tartary. about the size of asses but more compact and hand- 

 some, Colonel Hamilton Smith was led " to believe that these 

 tangums, as they are called in India, are a primeval stock 

 from which are derived not only the great proportion of pied 

 horses all over China, and even so far south as the Indian 

 Archipelago," but even the steeds of the Centaurs, from which 

 sprung the Thessalian breed in Greece, and the Borghese 

 piebald breed of Italy. But the wild horses seen by Father 

 Georgi, d'Hobsonville, Moorcroft, and others, were undoubtedly 

 either feral or merely half-wild ponies turned out on the 

 mountains, whilst we have just seen that the pied ponies of 

 Sumatra and Java are merely a modern outcome from blending 



1 Hamilton Smith, The Horse, pp. 289-92. 



