

Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 157 



Sometimes in addition there were stripes on the neck, fore- 

 head and withers. " There are sometimes stripes on the grey 

 and bay Kattywars when first foaled, but they soon fade 

 away 1 ." 



According to Major- General Tweedie 2 the "comparatively 

 uncrossed breeds of horses, mostly dun, or slate-coloured, which 

 still exist in several remote provinces of India, especially 

 Kathiawar, are remarkable for their hardy constitutions, power 

 of endurance, and indomitable tempers," and he mentions among 

 other characteristics their tendency to stripes, and to long ears 

 with their points much turned inward. 



As Darwin adduced the striped Kathiwar horses as typical 

 examples of the primitive dun-coloured striped animal from 

 which all our domestic breeds have come, and as a stuffed dun 

 Kathiwar horse with stripes is exhibited in the National 

 Museum of Zoology to illustrate this doctrine, it is very im- 

 portant to ascertain, whether the Kathiwar horses are an 

 indigenous uncrossed breed, or if not indigenous an uncrossed 

 breed derived from some other region, or whether they are only 

 a mixed breed of modern formation. If it should turn out that 

 they are neither indigenous nor uncrossed, the argument founded 

 on them by Darwin and succeeding writers will lose its validity. 



We have just seen that of the peoples from the frontiers of 

 western India, who furnished contingents to Xerxes' army in 

 480 B.C., the Bactrians supplied horsemen, the Indians chariots s 

 drawn either by horses or by ' wild asses.' From this it follows 

 that in some of the countries subject to the Persian king and 

 which bordered on India, horses were scarce and accordingly 

 asses were used instead. As we have already seen (p. 49), the 

 people of Carmania, that is the eastern portion of the modern 

 Persia and the western part of Baluchistan, through want of 

 horses still continued to use asses in warfare down to the time 

 of Christ. Now in view of the fact that the Bactrians (who 

 occupied the modern Afghanistan) supplied cavalry and that 

 the Vedic Indians who lived on the upper Indus had chariots 

 and horses, and that the Indians of that region were amply 



1 Darwin, Variation of Animals and Plants, Vol. i. p. 61. 



2 The Arabian Horse, p. 266. 



