Ill 



THE HORSE 



I. The Land of his Origin and his 

 Ancestors 



It is from the vast steppes oi northern Asia, 

 where the tempests rage and man can scarcely 

 live, that the horse has come. He did not come 

 (if himself, nor has he ever given himself wholly 

 t(i man, like the dog. On the contrary, even 

 now in his civilized state, he turns his back, and 

 sometimes his heels, on those he does not recog- 

 nize, if they come too near him. 



Feeding on those illimitable plains, the wild 

 horse learned to perceive at a great distance 

 the approach of his enemies, the wild beasts. 

 The quick ears pricked, a short neigh 

 sounded, and the horde dashed away 

 with the speed of the wind. He fled 

 before all strange life, and conse 

 quently before man, who sought 

 to capture him fur his flesh and 

 his skin. Here we come upon 

 the great natural motive, the 

 first cause of the drawing to- 

 gether of man and animals, — 

 hunger and its satisfying. This 

 is proved by the enormous quan 

 tity of horses' bones found in the 

 caves of prehistoric man. The skulls 

 and the cleft bones show that fles 

 marrow, and brains served as food 

 dwellers in those caverns. 



more for his good qualities when at last he 

 resigned himself and understood what was 

 wanted of him. His speed made the first great 

 impression upon man ; in fact, there are coun- 

 tries where his name comes to him from that 

 quality. In Hebrew, in Egyptian, and in some 

 other ancient languages the word si/s stands 

 for "horse" and for "swallow." The Greek 

 word /////('j- signifies "rapid." When the horse 

 was seen for the first time at Malacca he was 

 called kuda-barons:, the horse bird. 



The people of the steppes finally identified 

 themselves wholly with their steeds. The 

 Mongols, horsemen from time immemorial, 

 show it in their shape and their atti- 

 tude ; they have made, so to speak, 

 the horseman type, — curved legs 

 \ and the upper part of the body 

 bending forward. They sleep on 

 their horses, live with them, boast 

 of them, and love them more than 

 wife or child. 



The wild horse still exists, how- 

 ever ; he can be found in the 

 southern regions of Siberia, on the 

 plains of Mongolia, among the Ural 

 Mountains, and in America, where he 

 s a descendant of the horse stock brought 

 to the over by the Spanish explorers. As late as the 

 second half of the twelfth century he was 



It was probably not until much later that hunted in Spain, in the Belgian Ardennes, in 



the horse was tamed and subjected to the will 

 of man. The people of the steppes, surrounded 

 by wild animals of all kinds, learned to capture 

 the laggards and stragglers, and from this 

 dates a memorable epoch in the relations of 

 man to the animal kingdom. In all probability 

 a number of the smaller animals had sub- 

 mitted, while the great horse still protested 

 vehemently against enslavement. It is likely 

 that it was not by gentleness (as in our day) 



Italy, and in the south and east of what is 

 now Germany. Later still wild horses inhabited 

 the forests of Russia, and in the seventeenth 

 century were hunted in Poland and in Lithu- 

 ania. Those that were captured alive were 

 kept like cattle in inclosures, where they 

 were trained for either riding or draft, chiefly 

 for the former purpose. Mare's milk, which 

 is still greatly esteemed for cheese or whey 

 (koumiss) among the Tartars, was a chief 



that he was first subdued, which says all the article of food. 



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