16 THE EXISTING EQUIDAE [CH. 



(1) Equus caballus has hitherto been distinguished from 

 the rest of the family by the tail being covered with long hairs 

 from its base to its end, and by having chestnuts on the 

 inner sides of its hind-legs, as well as on its fore-legs. But 

 recent investigations have rendered this statement no longer 

 accurate, as will be made clear when we come to speak of 

 Ewart's Celtic pony, and Prejvalsky's horse. The Equus 

 caballus has a forelock, a longer mane, and shorter ears 

 than its relatives the asses and zebras, whilst in proportion 

 to its size its limbs are longer, its head smaller, and its hoofs 

 broader. A further distinction between the horse and the other 

 Equidae, first pointed out by Tegetmeier and Sutherland 1 , is 

 the length of the period of gestation, which in the horses is 

 eleven months, whilst in the asses and zebras it exceeds twelve 

 months. 



It is a matter of dispute whether the true Equus caballus 

 survived in a wild state in Europe down into the historical 

 period, for although Pliny 2 declares that the north of Europe 

 produces troops of wild horses, just as Asia and Africa produce 

 wild asses, and Strabo 3 states that wild horses were found in 

 the Alps, and also enumerates them among the wild animals of 

 Spain, it has been maintained that these were not indigenous, 

 but merely the descendants of domesticated horses which had 

 run wild. There are abundant records of the existence of wild 

 horses in upper Europe in not only the early but late Middle 

 Ages 4 . Thus St Boniface was rebuked by Pope Gregory III. 

 (A.D. 732) for permitting his German converts to eat the flesh 

 of wild horses as well as of tame, and wild horses were ap- 

 parently eaten by the monks of St Gallen about A.D. 1000. In 

 a Westphalian document of 1316, the fishing, game, and wild 

 horses of a certain forest are assigned to one Herman, and there 

 seem to have been wild horses in the Vosges in Merovingian 

 times and even at the end of the 16th century. There were 

 wild horses in Pomerania in the 12th century and there were 

 at the same period wild horses in Silesia, from which Duke 



1 Horses, Asses, Zebras, Mules, and Mule Breeding, p. 2. 



2 N. H. vni. 16. 3 207, 163. 



4 Hehn, Cultivated Plants and Domestic Animals, pp. 37-8. 



