468 



THE ORIGIN OF THE LIBYAN HORSE 



[CH. 



We have seen that according to Sanson many North African 

 horses and ponies frequently lack hock callosities, which have 

 been generally regarded as one of the chief distinctions between 

 Equus caballus and the asses and zebras, and Prof Ewart has 

 pointed out the same peculiarity in the ' Celtic ' ponies. But 

 we have seen that the dark-coloured cross-bred ' Celtic ' ponies 

 are certainly closely related to the dark breeds of Brittany, 

 Auvergne, and Ariege, which beyond doubt owe their form 

 and colour to the mixture of Libyan blood with the indigenous 

 horses of France. We have also seen that the Libyan horses 

 have been crossed from several centuries before Christ with 

 horses from Europe in order to give them greater strength, 

 whilst it is absolutely certain that a vast proportion of the so- 

 called Arabs, especially those of a grey colour and large size, 

 such as the Gulf Arabs bred by the Montefic tribes of South 

 Arabia, and the horses of Babylonia, have a very large propor- 

 tion of Asiatic blood in their veins. But as the hock callosities 

 are the special feature of both the domestic Asiatic horses and 

 also of Prejvalsky's horse, it would indeed be strange if Arab 

 horses of a coarser type and many North African horses, which 

 have much of the old European strain (derived through Spain) 

 in their veins, should not have inherited hock callosities from 

 their Asiatic and European ancestors. 



Of course it is possible that, as in Upper Europe there were 

 two distinct types of horse — the slender and the coarse — so in 

 North Africa there may have been a heavy type, corresponding 

 to the old European horses of Sohitre as well as the small 

 slender horse, for it would indeed be rash to maintain (especially 

 in view of Prof Osborn's researches) that only one variety of 

 horse had roamed the plains of Libya in remote epochs. But 

 there is not a scrap of historical evidence to show that the 

 Libyan tribes from the Nile to the Atlantic originally possessed 

 any domestic horse except the small slender type, which I term 

 E. c. lihycus, whilst the presence of horses of a heavier type in 

 those parts of North Africa which were in contact with Asia, 

 Greece, Italy, and Spain, is fully explained by the abundant 

 evidence of the introduction of the heavy horses of Asia and 

 Europe into that region. 



