MARKINGS 25 



PART V. THE MARKINGS OF THE HORSE. 



Darwin wrote of the probable " descent of 

 all existing races from a single dun-coloured, 

 more or less striped primitive stock to which 

 our horses occasionally revert." 



The stories of the Great Ice Age and of 

 Bering Land have shown us a variety of 

 swiftly changing cUmates in which the original 

 three-fold dun striped ancestors beg:at a special 



ERRATUM. 



Page 25^ line 9. For three-fold read three-toed. 



<awwiio cxLiKx vdiicj'o, uicvjL cav^ii Lucii spcuicii type 



of the wild horse. 



Evidence of the Wind. It is not so very 

 long since the last clumps of timber vanished 

 from the steppes. Still on the North Ameri- 

 can range one finds the trunks and roots of 

 forest trees which silicate swamps have changed 

 into masses of jaspar onyx and chalcedony ; 

 and these have not had time to sink as stones 

 do into the soil. In a seven hundred mile ride 

 across the Canadian plains, I found a living 

 clump of three pines distant a hundred-and- 

 fifty miles from the edge of the shrunken forest. 

 Such shelters have indeed so lately disappeared 

 that the horse has not yet learned the trick of 



