Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 263 



in their hasty flight and from want of vessels, to leave their 

 mares behind them. 



The baguales form immense herds, sometimes numbering 

 12,000 according to Azara. They frequently entice away 

 domestic horses, who remain ever after with their wild 

 comrades. Travellers often used to find themselves unable 

 to continue their journey, their relays of fresh horses, which 

 were always driven loose before them, being enticed away 

 by the wild horses. The baguales' mode of attack is not 

 in line of battle, but some precede the others, forming a 

 vanguard, and the rest follow in a column, which is never 

 broken or interrupted, and at most only changes its direction 

 if they are frightened *. 



Azara estimates the proportion of bays amongst these horses 

 to be about ninety to ten zains, that is, entirely dark-coloured 

 without any white ; and there is not one black in two thousand ; 

 pied and greys occur sometimes, but are then invariably 

 individuals escaped from domestic conditions 2 . As the grey 

 and rufous-grey horses of the Asturias stock are very common 

 in the hills and northern states of South America, the grey 

 horses which occasionally occur on the Pampas are probably 

 of this breed. 



Now as the Pampas horses have been living under natural 

 conditions for the last three centuries, and do not show any 

 tendency to grey, black, or pied, whilst bay forms their 

 universal colour, it seems clear that the latter is the inherent 

 colour of the Libyan horse, and that it does not tend to black, 

 grey, or pied, except when crossed with the European-Asiatic 

 stock. 



The history of the domestic horse in North America is in 

 many respects closely parallel to its story in the southern part 

 of the same continent. Although North America, as we have 

 seen (pp. 6, 7), played a leading part in the evolution of the 

 Equidae, and although in the early Pleistocene period owing 

 to the favourable conditions of environment there were great 

 numbers of and several kinds of horses, such as E. complicatus 



1 Azara, op. cit. pp. 5-6. 2 Hamilton Smith, op. cit. p. 175. 



